| Travels of Dursmirg Vol. 3 Chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8 |
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CHAPTER 5 MIAMI; "THE CAPITAL OF CENTRAL AMERICA”
Miami is a tropical seaport city of glitter and glitz warmed by the Gulf Stream waters.
An isolated sleepy little bug infested jungle town in 1896 was incorporated with a population of 260.
One year later in 1897 Henry Flagler brought his Florida East Coast Railroad to town and the population explosion
began in earnest.
By the time of the real estate boom in the 1920s the influx of immigrants was an astonishing 4000 persons per day
and Pan American Airlines began flights to Latin America from Miami.
In 1926 a killer hurricane flattened Miami and sent seagoing freighters into the city center.
A friend of ours from ST. Augustine, the father-in-law to the famous Jimmie Ponce, had been stationed at the
prominent lighthouse near the south end of Key Biscayne, Fowey Rocks Light, during that killer hurricane of 1926
and his story was incredible, fascinating and captivating. The description of the wind building, the structure
trembling, the water rising and the heroic efforts made by him and his associates who kept a generator set operating
throughout the storm that gave every indication of carrying all of them away to the raging sea still haunts us. The
lighthouse workers wrestled their generator up three flights of stairs within the structure just ahead of the oncoming
rise of tidal flood and kept the lighthouse light going throughout that entire storm.
Fowey Rocks Lighthouse
The next year in 1927 Chicago-land mobster Al Capone came to town and that was just the tip of the iceberg with
crime in Florida. The pirates of old had little to plunder in Florida but now the robber barons, flim-flamers and skim-
scammers would take crime to new unprecedented levels fleecing newcomers without using guns.
This would usher in the new age of “slickers” that used crony capitalism, nepotism and political extortion to
redistribute the wealth.
(Descendants of the Pirates and Conquistadors-it was now the little guys verses big guys) The big guys own all the
politicians up to and including the President of the United States and the little guys just get shot up and jailed so that
they wouldn’t get in on the lucrative vice businesses.
Richard Nixon and his good pal Bebe Rebozo were involved in several Miami area land transactions that stirred up
questions of impropriety.
Jane and I visited one of those controversial places on April 13th 1974 at the invitation of the park rangers that
invited us to an Easter dinner at the old club house on the south end of the Biscayne National Park at Adams Key
next to Elliot Key where Gar Woods and many of his rich racy society set crony eccentrics whose fortunes were
acquired by dubious means used to hang out.
Jane and I felt like intruders in this ghost filled sanctuary of the rich and famous but at the same time we felt
privileged to visit in this historical spot that was scheduled for demolition by the National Park Service that year and
would be no more.
Situated on the south end of Biscayne Bay, these Keys were a continuation of the string of islands beginning in the
Miami area and extending south and then west to Key West and then on out to the Dry Tortugas.
Though we were very happy that this National Seashore was set aside for the public, somehow the Nixon-Rebozo
connection cast some doubt about the cleanliness of the transaction.
The Biscayne National Monument Park was a plus for the state of Florida. But Nixon’s closing of the cross Florida
barge canal, (connecting Jacksonville directly to the Gulf of Mexico near Crystal River) which was not only fully
funded but had been completed with the bridges, locks, and even channel markers awaiting the flow of marine traffic
had to be a step back toward taking America in the direction of third world status.
The only reasoning that we could ever figure for this political chicanery was that the then powerful Miami land
developer, Bebe Rebozo, who was at the time “in bed” with President Richard Nixon pressured Nixon to put through
the closure because the canal would divert some business away from Miami where Rebozo made his fortune in real
estate and banking.
Bebe Rebozo was born in 1912 the 9th child of nine whose father was a cigar maker in Tampa and of Cuban decent.
Voted the best looking in his 1930 high school class he went on to work as a steward for Pan American Airways
headquartered at Dinner Key in south Miami. In 1943 he became a navigator and helped deliver airplanes to North
Africa during the war. From there he next went on to purchase a gas station and then get into the tire recapping
business.
Buying under developed land he got his start in the real estate business and later banking.
In 1968 he listed his net worth at $673, 000 and several years later after converting from a Democrat to a
Republican his net worth was listed at $4,000,000.
Nixon, Rebozo and a man named Smathers invested in a land speculation deal and purchased Fisher’s Island in
Miami and planned a causeway. Nixon got out of the deal in 1970 at a huge profit.
A publication named “Newsday” did an expose on this: Nixon was then furious and denied “Newsday” any
Whitehouse press privileges nor allowed them to accompany the president on foreign trips.
Two years later the Washington Post carried a story: Rebozo cashed a $91,500 stolen check in his bank. He then
sued the Post for libel and $1,000,000. The case was settled quietly out of court. Rebozo’s bank slogan was; “where
other banks have branches we have roots”.
Bebe Rebozo bought the San Clemente, California estate for Richard Nixon for $650,000…for love of country?
Nixon and Rebozo were close neighbors on Key Biscayne and when Nixon was in Miami everyone knew because no
boats were allowed within about two miles of Key Biscayne. The security was tight with helicopters swooping and
hovering around the Key day and night. A large platform had been constructed just outside of the entry to the small
harbor where Nixon’s home was located as a helicopter landing pad. We got almost blown out of the water by those
helicopters when we went sailing anywhere out on Biscayne Bay.
One Sunday afternoon we were out joy-riding in a friends van and the owner Dave McDougal decided that he
wanted to go over to Key Biscayne to Dick Nixon’s house and pay him a visit. Our friends Bubba and Linda Schill
were also along. We were all surprised when we got as far as the driveway of Nixon’s home before being stopped
by the secret police. McDougal got belligerent and insistent about talking to Nixon and all of the rest of us just
shrank down in disbelief with the thought that for sure we would all be going off and doing some time for this caper.
In the end McDougal was finally bullied away but we did park in Nixon’s driveway for some time. (McDougal was a
social misfit like the rest of us “boat people” and I have some interesting stories about him later on in this volume
and also in volume 4.)
*
A new era for Miami began when Fidel Castro took over power in Cuba. Along with the doctors, lawyers and other
professional persons that fled the tyranny of Castro also came a flood of common folk eager to escape. Like the
majority of Cubans, they were industrious and very hard working.
The Miami Cubans went wild with their avowed and open hatred for Fidel Castro and all he stood for. Long hair and
beards made for instant hatred.
When Jane and I first arrived in Miami aboard our boat Dursmirg in the early 1970s we were surprised at this open
hostility that manifested itself in Miami’s downtown Bay Front Park where the Cuban exiles were giving free hair cuts
to all the unwilling long-hairs that they could find. We found it ironic that after just leaving the oppressive Cuban
regime where Castro had just rounded up nearly 25,000 gays and sent them off to hard labor in concentration
camps resembling the German Nazi’s at Auschwitz that these Miami Cubans would then engage in similar oppression
in their new and adopted country.
This made me think of an ironic observation I have made after reading many a history book. The first thing that a
slave will do after overthrowing their master is to go out and get himself a slave.
In April of 1959, Fidel Castro traveled to Washington on an unofficial visit. Castro was stood up by President
Eisenhower who opted to play golf rather than meet with him and sent Vice President Nixon to meet with him. Nixon
did have a three-hour meeting with Castro and displayed an instant dislike to the bearded Castro and wouldn’t even
shake his hand. By the time Castro finished his tour with no pledges of assistance or loans he knew that the
Eisenhower administration had already decided against him.
(I can still distinctly remember Castro’s appearance on the late night TV show of Jack Parr when Jack made several
wise cracks about “The Batista Flea/Flee”.) Castro was welcomed to the show like an arriving folk hero with hoopla
and backslapping and had no problem with speaking English, something he would later on rarely do.
Eisenhower’s parting shot when leaving office to President Kennedy was; “The United States cannot allow the
Castro government to continue to exist in Cuba.”
Jorge Mas Canosa would turn out to be the most powerful politically of these Cuba immigrants to land in Miami. He
got his humble beginnings as a dishwasher starting out at the hotel Fontainebleau on Miami Beach and later worked
as a milk deliveryman. By the time he died in 1994 at the age of 58 he was worth $400 million and a company he
formed, Mas Tec Inc., was valued at over $700 million.
Jorge Mas Canosa was referred to as a mobster, a gangster and would definitely make Al Capone seem tame by
comparison. He had close ties to several presidents: Reagan, Bush and Clinton all had connections to this the
slickest of “slicksters” amongst the Miami Cuban community.
In the war of words over the years Fidel Castro said of Mas Canosa; “Miami is in the stronghold of a fascist Mafia”.
Also; “un bicho malo nunca murere” or “a bad bug never dies”.
Jorge Mas Canosa boastfully said; “I am non-violent? No, I am pro-violence. I think that Castro should be overthrown
by a revolution!”
“The Israeli lobby buys Democrats and rents Republicans; the Cubans buy Republicans and rent Democrats.”
Mas Canosa referred to Americans as “Gringos” and said this when asked if he thought that the Americans would
take over Cuba after Castro’s departure; “That’s bullshit! Mierda! Crap! They haven’t even been able to take over
Miami. If I have kicked them out of here, how could they possibly take over my country?”
“The road to Havana runs through Managua.” (After his involvement with Oliver North and the Iran-Contras,)
“I stand with the president of the United States”
A quote from one of Mas Canosa’s ex-partners, Raúl Masvidal; “This guy has two agendas: to be president of Cuba
for life…and to make more money.”
Known as; “El Jefe” or (the boss) Jorge Mas Canosa’s fellow Miami Cubans had a slogan and chant that went like
this; “Fidel Castro, Mas Canosa…la misma cosa” or “Fidel Castro, Mas Canosa…the same thing”.
In 1960 Mas Canosa fled to Miami and hooked up with the CIA financed anti-Castro groups in South Florida. He
played a role in the Bay of Pigs invasion as a squad leader and when the invasion failed he fled back to Miami.
Following the Bay of Pigs invasion he joined the U.S. Army; he was soon commissioned as a second lieutenant. He
went to Fort Benning, Georgia and trained with the exile elite being instructed in intelligence, clandestine operations
and propaganda. At Fort Benning he became close with two men who would remain lifelong friends, Felix Rodriguez
and Luis Posada Carriles. Both would be CIA operatives in the Iran-Contra affair. The former would participate in the
murder of Che Guevara; the latter would be Fidel Castro’s most persistent would-be assassin, bombing a Cuban
bound airliner that killed 73 youths. For this he received a slap on the back and an unconditional pardon from the
Americans.
When it became clear that the second invasion of Cuba would never happen, Mas Canosa returned to Miami.
Jorge Mas Canosa got deeply involved with two CIA backed counter revolutionary anti- Castro groups in the 1960s
that included; RECI or (Cuban Representation in Exile) and COUR or (Commandos of the Unites Revolutionary
Organization).
Schooled at Fort Benning, Georgia and the School of the Americas, nearby that specialized in torture and sabotage,
Mas Canosa and Luis Posada Carriles plus 212 other exiles chosen by the CIA anxiously prepared for the second
invasion of Cuba that never came. The schooling wasn’t wasted however and would be used throughout Mas
Canosa’s life to further his cause both economically and politically.
RECI was an alliance of twenty extreme anti-Castro dedicated militants such as Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles
and Ignacio and Guillermo Novo. Pepin Bosch from the Bacardi group and his associates financed this group.
Jorge Mas Canosa also had strong ties to the Miami newspaper business along with being a radio broadcast
announcer at Radio Swan, the CIA anti-Castro propaganda station. From 1981 until his death, Jorge Mas Canosa
was the sole chairman of radio and TV Marti (the government sponsored and financed anti-Castro propaganda
network) and ran it as his personal empire. With an iron hand he disposed of colleagues and associates and even
directors at the whim of his will.
His power extended to deciding who would run for office, receive government contracts and even survive in Miami
and Dade County.
Many large businesses were afraid not to be in business with Mas Canosa because of the fact that he just might be
the next president of Cuba.
By 1990, with his close ties to Presidents Reagan and Bush, Mas Canosa arrogantly viewed himself as the emperor
of Miami, soon to lead the largest island state in the Caribbean.
“Mas Canosa led the perfect double life; he was running covert military raids against Cuba while denouncing
violence as an option”
Gaeton Fonzi, a former investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations said about Mas Canosa;
“Mas Canosa was born and bred by the CIA and was a master of psychological warfare,”
More than just, “medio chuecado” or a little crooked in business dealings Mas Canosa always got what he wanted;
bamboozling his partner out of a cable television company unremorsefully was all in a day’s work.
Congressman Charles Rangel of New York witnessed how far Mas Canosa would go and how much power he
wielded.
One day Mas Canosa paid Charles Rangel a surprise visit. Rangel said that Mas Canosa held up an imaginary jar of
honey and said; “If you cooperate with me you get the honey. Otherwise, I hit you with the jar.”
Rangel set up a meeting with the FBI and filed a complaint…The FBI downplayed the threat as a rhetorical gesture
and dropped the investigation. (You just can’t beat that kind of political power and Mas Canosa trumped Rangel.)
Crime was everywhere present in Miami and the city had gotten a notorious international reputation that was well
deserved.
Bombings, shootings and subversive political pressures were the rule. I have often said that; “if the Mexicans wanted
to take lessons in corruption they would have to come to Florida”.
There was so much dirty drug money floating around Miami at the time that we read many of the Miami banks were
shuffling stacks and bales of money around with front end loaders.
Our friend, Nira Brown, used to jokingly say that; “in Monroe County you could become a druggie by osmosis.”
(Monroe County is the county where the Florida Keys are located, south of Miami and Dade County.)
The national crime scandal took on such grand proportions that a TV series was done based on the subject called,
“Miami Vice”.
Jane and I absolutely loved Cuban food and the Cuban community along Calle Ocho in “Little Havana”, the heart of
the Cuban section of downtown Miami.
We never missed an opportunity to frequent our favorite Cuban restaurants and to savor their specialties anytime
we were anywhere near Miami.
One beautiful full moonlit spring evening Jane and I together with our sailing friends Bud and Joyce Partridge took a
trip down into Little Havana to have dinner at one of our favorite restaurants called, “La Esquina de Tejas”. (This
happened to also be where Ronald Reagan cemented his relations with the Cuban community.)
The postcard above was given to us by the owners of the Esquina de Tejas Restaurant in Little Havana.
It commemorates the time when President Ronald Reagan was a guest in the restaurant.
For quality and quantity at honest prices the Cubans make stiff competition for their competitors and are real
entrepreneurial capitalists at heart.
After our leisurely multi-course meal we went out on the street and discovered that the evening was just too lovely to
head back home so we opted for a stroll down Flagler Street to enjoy the atmosphere of the full moonlit night.
The evening was delightful and we had read that the Miami police had just instituted a new anti-crime initiative to
clean up this part of town so we struck off strolling with measured inquisitiveness east toward the Miami River. As we
walked along we were encouraged by the presence of many friendly and reassuring police who waved and greeted
us along the way.
We got as far as the Miami River and savored the moment that was just too good to be true and unanimously
decided that we should continue on toward the downtown section of Miami…it was such a lovely night and the town
just beckoned us to continue…so we did.
Heading east on Flagler Street we soon approached Miami Avenue and our walk was terrific.
At the corner of Flagler Street and Miami Avenue we were startled to be pushed up against the building by a
policeman who came running around the corner with his gun drawn as a large pickup truck with oversized wheels
smoking and spinning came screaming by with a bunch of men in the back all blasting away with machine guns.
Before we could all collectively piss in our pants the police officer explained to us that they were filming a sequence
for the television series, “Miami Vice”.
The most incredible thing about this was that this was all done in the actual city and they actually sat in traffic waiting
for the traffic light to turn from red to green to begin their filming sequence directly within the normal traffic.
We then stood by to watch as they did a retake of the same sequence, this time with sawed-off shotguns. The
second sequence was so life like that we had a hard time believing that it was only a mocked up filming.
On a related subject, sometime later Jane and I were down in the Florida Keys just south of Miami on Card Sound
Road that leads off to Key Largo via a toll road visiting our friends Bob and Beverly Baker who had their fifty-four
foot ferro-cement sailboat tied there.
This was a wild frontier where nobody owned the land or paid any rent and just squatted along the causeway. Two
bars were there and doing a booming business while not complying with any governmental rules or regulations.
These open decrepit, dilapidated, rickety, rundown and ramshackle bars were more than just rough and tough and
had to have been thrown up with materials that had been scrounged from the local garbage dump.
I don’t think that any movie set could have possibly replicated these dwellings with this attention to crummy
authenticity.
In the early evening we watched as several large bus loads and some heavy laden trucks came rolling in and set up
to do some filming for two local area feature length movies that they were doing on location. Miami Vice and Karate
Girl
We watched with amazement the huge number of scripted actors and extras queuing up to take part in the filming.
The amount of equipment and work plus preparation in proportion to the amount of film actually being shot gave us
a new realization to the exorbitant extravagance that this industry poured into their productions.
(Note: to get a better perspective of this very real part of American history that is exquisitely documented and
descriptively narrated I highly recommend you read the following book; Cuba Confidential by Ann Louise Bardach. I
have this book listed in my recommended reading section also.)
CHAPTER 6 MIAMI DOWNTOWN
Miami downtown in the 1970s was in an explosive expansion driven by the recent influx of industrious Cubans and
they pulled the city out of a slump while the rest of the country was being beaten down by the financial impact of the
recent Arab oil embargo.
There was a feeling in the air that opportunity could be the key to the future through dedicated hard work and the
Cuban community with their close family oriented lifestyle put a positive spin on this end of the world.
Little mom and pop business establishments of all kinds sprang up throughout the downtown providing excellent
quality, craftsmanship and service that almost went overboard as they bent over backwards to satisfy the customer.
Viewed from afar, the most important structure in downtown Miami’s skyline was the federal government building. (In
later years, it was completely dwarfed by numerous surrounding skyscrapers.) But, in the 1970s the federal building
was the tallest and Burdines department store was second tallest in the heart of Miami’s downtown. All around
Burdines was where you changed busses for north, south, west and the beaches.
The downtown was filled with little Cuban restaurants with sidewalk coffee served through small slide open windows
where the fast moving Cubans would pause to slug down their specialty of Cuban coffee that required one cup of
coffee grounds to render a two ounce cup of this sweetened go-fast potion that was then chased by a glass of
water. That coffee is a specialty of the Cuban community and one of those small cups will definitely accelerate your
heart, bug out your eyes and make you talk fast just like the Cubans do.
I have to mention our love affair with the fabulous Cuban cuisine that does wondrous things with pork and seafood
using special marinades and copious quantities of garlic. Fried plantains called tostones, avocado salad, black
beans and rice known as Moros and Christianos, along with their specialty custard for desert called flan
accompanied with their special coffee have made Jane and I into regulars at a number of Little Havana’s now
famous restaurants.
Little Havana generally refers to an area west of the city center and over the Miami River. Flagler Street passes from
downtown through the neighborhood where the Cuban influence carries over to the most famous street in Little
Havana, Calle Ocho, or Eighth Street in English.
This made me think of a prominent sign I spotted in a Cuban store in Little Havana proudly proclaiming, “si hablamos
ingles”. Yes, we speak English.
In a tree shrouded park in Little Havana table after table is filed each day with Cuban men in deep concentration
pondering over their next move in their favorite game of dominos.
Jane and I became regular customers in a Cuban hardware store on 12th street in Little Havana. A&E Hardware was
packed to the ceiling with merchandise and the friendly owner and his wife proudly knew where every item was.
We discovered that they had a full inventory of spare parts for our little kerosene Primus cooking stove that was a
product of Sweden and evidently popular amongst the Cuban community in Miami.
We would bring our shopping list of hardware needs to A&E Hardware and if for some reason the owner couldn’t
supply our every need they would have us sit down while the wife or one of the sons would literally run out to scour
the neighborhood in order to fill our needs…we were impressed with just how eager they were to make us satisfied
and happy customers.
Jane standing on the sidewalk of Calle Ocho in Little Havana
We always looked forward to our trip to Little Havana. When we were in Miami we kept our boat at Dinner Key and
took the bus or bicycled to downtown for shopping and sampling foods in the countless restaurants.
In all of our many visits to the different Little Havana restaurants over the years I can’t ever remember having an
unpleasant dining experience. La Esquina de Tejas got most of our business though they had intense competition
from their competitors. Quality, quantity, service and very reasonable prices kept us coming back.
A store that catered to supplying to the mom and pop grocery stores and also sold institutional sized foods aimed at
the Latin community in downtown Miami was Canters. Jane was making her own tortillas and here she could
purchase ten pound tin cans of masa harina or corn flour specially ground for making tortillas. We found that
Canters was an ideal place for the cruising sailor to fit out.
On 27th avenue was located Miami’s most extensive marine hardware store, Crook and Crook. At the time they got
their price because most of their merchandise was aimed at yacht owners who mostly had more money than they
knew how to spend and the Miami area was just packed with yachts…mostly huge ones.
Jane and I often would go shopping there with our friend Fred Everson, a Canadian with a 50-foot plus yacht he
kept docked at the Dinner Key Marina in Coconut Grove. Without fail every time we would come out of Crock and
Crock Marine Hardware Store Fred would shake his head and exclaim, “I just discovered that I can’t afford to own a
yacht”.
Well, if you did own a yacht and weren’t rolling in dough you would inevitably wind up shopping at Simmons junkyard
out on Milam Dairy Road. We soon became such regulars here that we were in a first name basis with the owners.
The specialty of Simmons was the salvage of aircraft and they had everything associated with that industry of all of
the major carriers that flew in and out of the Miami area. Did you need a jet engine, row upon row of aircraft seats,
landing gear, upholstery material, plexi-glass, aluminum sheet, magnesium, stainless steel or even galley
equipment?
The inventory moved in and out fast and Jane and I always found essentials to make our sailing life even better at
super prices.
Stainless steel hardware was hard to find but it was available here no matter what our requirements were.
Jane would purchase whole rolls of upholstery material and all of the associated accessories to do whatever project
she might undertake.
We still have and use to this day a stainless steel coffee pot with an Eastern Airlines logo embossed on it that we
purchased there. That company has been out of business for many a year but that coffee pot still has no signs of
quitting. The handle died some time back and it now has a tropical wooden handle fashioned from a twisted root.
Our one-dollar purchase at Simmons has served us well.
Sanders Hardware store on 27th street was a regular stop for us because it was close to Coconut Grove.
Across the street from Sanders Hardware store was located a Greek restaurant where we first sampled feta cheese
Greek style.
South of the city center was located a huge plantation filled with towering ancient avocado and mango trees. During
World War II the plantation was used as a dirigible base and later abandoned and those trees got larger and larger
with no one to harvest their prolific crop until we came along. The group from the Dinner Key anchorage would go
out to the old dirigible base on a reconnaissance mission to harvest the “free fruit”. Jane and I were invited to tag
along and made many a trip that kept us well inventoried with those huge avocados that seemed to all get ripe at
once. I never did get tired of eating them. Besides guacamole, we discovered the Cuban secret of their avocado
salad, which was always out of this world. They marinated thinly sliced onions in key lime juice and put them over the
sliced avocado that was on its last stages of firmness. Lightly sprinkled with salt, this dish is elegant and simple if
you only know the secret of its preparation.
Bubba and Linda Schill, Dave McDougal and others like Tom and Travis would take turns driving the group. The
Arab oil embargo made frivolous driving unthinkable at that time.
Another effect of that Arab oil embargo was that kerosene became impossible to obtain and we used kerosene in
our lanterns, stove and refrigerator. We quickly discovered an alternative fuel that worked even better than
kerosene and that was mineral spirits that was obtained at the local paint store and was relatively cheap. It was not
long and a run was put on that commodity also, and it too became scarce.
We felt fortunate having bicycles for land transportation and our sails to carry us to wherever we cared to go while
the rest of the country was suffering with a multitude of petroleum related shortages and paying over $2.00 a gallon
for gasoline and standing in long lines to get it besides.
MIAMI RADIO
All the time that Jane and I were building our boat Dursmirg we completely gave up TV.
When I first met Jane, I owned five TV sets and we soon discovered that we definitely had better things to do with
our lives than watch TV. (Many people go through life mesmerized in a TV induced stupor and miss the best years
of their lives.)
As I many times later in life would say when people would ask; “how did you get your boat?” and I would reply; “we
got our boat for free” then they would ask; “well, how did you do that?” My stock reply was, “we just didn’t watch TV
for five years and applied those hours to making money and building our boat.”
Even though we did not watch TV all those years and even sailed away with none aboard, we used our radio
extensively for news, weather, and music. In Miami we discovered talk radio at its finest.
Radio in the Miami area in the 1970s was cutting edge entertainment featuring the best in the country outside of the
New York market. Chuck and Neal Rogers (live talk radio specializing in the local issues). Lynne Russell, (special
interest and the news programs). Larry King, (talk radio featuring big name entertainers plus the rich and famous).
Ethel Blum, (travel shows on Saturday mornings). Anita Bryant, (glorious self-righteous religious fervor and
wholesome Christian family values that came down hard on the gay movement. She was bankrolled and sponsored
by the Florida orange growers association and as a result, the standing joke at the time was; “orange juice makes
you queer”). WKAT, “cat with a K” was our most listened to radio station along with WDIO. Every night we would
crawl into our front berth and tune into Public Radio where the nightly program featured Mystery Theater. These
programs were very well done and would have been a big hit if they had been produced before the days of
television.
Public Radio and the Cuban propaganda stations filled the airways and rounded out the wide spectrum of choices
available to the area listeners.
The following is a radio skit that I remember hearing from the 1970s; At Miami Beach, there had been a problem
with a broken water main and the residents were cautioned to boil their drinking water before consuming it in the
event of contamination. The skit went like this; “Consider this, someday you may have to drink recycled sewage
water”…the reply was “Oh, No!” Then the announcer said; “But consider this, there might not be enough”… the
reply was “OH!!! NO!!!”
Note; We installed a wind-powered generator we purchased from the British manufacturer at the Miami Boat Show to
charge our batteries that put out 5 amps of current and that far exceeded what we could consume. (Photo of wind
generator)
We burned lots of lights and considered other possibilities for consuming some of our now free electricity.
Anchored in the deep-water anchorage December 12, 1976 at Dinner Key; you can see our newly
installed wind generator. Jane is chatting with some of our boating neighbors rafted alongside
Dursmirg. Mark and Judy Ross aboard their boat Song of Myself from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
At the Miami flea market one Saturday morning I happened to find a 12-volt television set and struck up a deal. Jane
looked at me with a blank look and asked; “what do you think you are going to do with that?”
We only used our new TV in our wheelhouse to view certain programs and used up our over abundance of free wind
generated electricity. Again, our belief was reaffirmed that TV was mostly a waste of time but it was a good
diversionary device that kept the masses off the waterways and out of other public places where we wanted to be
and made those places better for us.
CHAPTER 7 MIAMI BEACH
This little piece of real estate that is situated in eastern Dade County is in reality the northern most of the Florida
Keys. With the Atlantic Ocean and the warm waters of the Gulf Stream flanking its eastern shore this island has the
shallow waters of Biscayne Bay on its west side.
The island of Miami Beach also has the distinction of being the southern most end of the line for the very famous
highway A1A that traces Florida’s east coast all the way down from the Georgia border. Another prominent and
historical highway that also ends on Miami Beach on the southern end of Collins Avenue where A1A quits is Highway
41. Highway 41, also known as the “Tamiami Trail” as it crosses southern Florida connecting Miami with Naples via
the Florida Everglades before it turns north on its way across America all the way up to Marquette, Michigan on
Lake Superior.
A reason I happen to mention these two cross roads is because they have historical significance to me.
Back in the 1940s I first had the privilege of traversing both of these highways with my parents when they made
several trips to Florida by car. I have some very vivid descriptions of these two highways as I have described them
both in my autobiography.
Jane and I have driven both highway A1A and 41 throughout Florida and in the 1980s we actually decided to do a
back road across America trip and drove the entire length of Highway 41 all the way up into Upper-Michigan.
It is interesting that back in the 1940s there were no superhighways and Highway 41 was “the road to take to
Florida”, and it would take you all the way to Miami Beach.
***
I can’t mention Miami Beach without mentioning the most prominent inhabitants of the place, the Jewish community.
When we arrived with our boat Dursmirg back in the 1970s the tension with Cuban refugees and Cuba’s hostility
toward them and United States in general was at the point of open warfare.
The then prime minister of Israel, Golda Meir, made a proclamation that if Fidel Castro ever invaded Miami Beach
that she would consider that to be, “a direct assault on Israel”.
***
In the early 1970s Miami Beach was not by any means the high-rent district of Florida and just seemed to be on the
verge of slipping into the state of neglect.
Though we could find a pleasant neighborhood atmosphere with smallness of scale that possessed no franchise
eateries and only modest mom and pop businesses, Miami Beach had a unique life all of its own.
The atmosphere was captivating and charming in a reminiscent kind of way that mentally would take the visitor back
in time to some other place akin to the 1930s in a Jewish neighborhood in New York City. The restaurants like the
famous Wolfies on Collins Avenue were kosher and put out the very best of everything. The business was nonstop
at Wolfies and finding a table even in off hours was usually challenging but the service and attention to detail made
it worth the effort. We always went away with pleasant and lasting memories that beckoned us back.
Delicatessens would display temptations that were nearly irresistible and the standard was the corned beef on rye
with a kosher dill pickle. Also the cheese blitzes were very tasty and irresistible.
Entertainment was our favorite feature of Miami Beach and the matinee shows with their stand-up comics and
Vaudeville routines employed many of the top old-time original names from the heyday of Vaudeville. The prices
were definitely off-Broadway and too reasonable to pass up. “B” movies that had to have been cast-offs or discards
usually followed those wonderful live shows…but the price was absolutely, categorically and undeniably right.
Evenings a drive down Collins Avenue was like a visit to a tropical open-air old folks home.
The famous 1930s and 1940s “Art Deco” hotels that were in a state of just hanging on at this point and time would
be packed to capacity when the season was right. One feature that these hotels all shared was their large street
front patios lined with rocking chairs and interspersed with wheel chairs and each filled with some senior citizen that
had come south to warm their ancient bones in these warm tropical and balmy breezes. The most amazing thing of
all was that there were no vacancies in those chairs that were all crammed tightly with not an extra inch to spare.
Some of the estates fronting on the west side of Miami Beach along Biscayne Bay took opulence to the point of
decadence.
We were fortunate to get the royal tour of one magnificent bay front estate while it was still in the Allworth family; it
was later bequeathed to the University of Minnesota.
Jane’s uncle, Carl Pearson was the manager of the Allworth estate that covered more than one city block and
fronted on Biscayne Bay. Carl’s wife, Sonja was the chief cook there and they both were provided with their own
offices and also a lovely home over in North Miami at 105th Street North.
Occasionally Jane and I would bus from Dinner Key to visit Jane’s aunt and uncle who lived in North Miami. Our bus
trip would take us to downtown Miami where we changed busses in front of Burdines’s Department Store. Then we
traveled north through the roughest part of town called Liberty City. We would then repeat this process on our
return trip at one AM. Several years later, the crime problem became so acute in Miami that this trip was not even
safe in daylight let alone at one AM.
(I have to tell a story about an incident aboard a Miami bus back in the 1970s; a pleasant and helpful young man
boarded the city bus and sat next to a lady that was heavily adorned with gold jewelry. The young man told the lady
that it wasn’t safe to wear all that expensive jewelry on the bus and that she should stick it in her purse. She thanked
him and stowed her jewelry. At the next bus stop, the young man snatched her purse and fled.)
CHAPTER 8 MIAMI/DINNER KEY/COCONUT GROVE
Oh, by the way!
This is a good place to describe Coconut Grove back in the 1970s when the locals referred to it as merely, “The
Grove”. A timeline in American history is necessary to put this place in its proper prospective and paint a picture of
the divided and fragmented nation that was a product of the “free love 60s” when “the pill” and cannabis opened the
door to LSD and anything else that would yield “high-times”. The drop out mentality had begun in California and New
York by the new age hippies who went the extra mile to defy the establishment that was mom, apple pie and kill the
Gooks in Vietnam. Now the back-to-back Arab oil embargos and run away inflation caused by the Vietnam War
spending gave way to the next scandal, a presidential impeachment. There was plenty to divide the country and little
Coconut Grove became the home to the dropout sub-culture.
A southern suburb of Miami, Coconut Grove still possessed a sleepy tropical atmosphere from the bygone days
when it earned its name from the extensive coconut plantations. If you walked or bicycled through any of the many
parks or along Old Cutler Road leading south out of “The Grove” on windy afternoons you would be sure find the
ground strewn with coconuts. (We found this to be a bonanza and quickly found many uses for them. I found a quick
way to open them and Jane did the rest. She made coconut wine and shredded and roasted the meat.
It wasn’t long and we realized that we were going to make Dinner Key a regular stopping place on our sailing to and
from the Florida Keys so we expeditiously got a post office box and had a Miami address. (Over the course of 22
years of living in Florida, we actually had five different places we called home around the state.)
Back to Bubba and Linda at Dinner Key and Coconut Grove;
Somehow, Bubba, Linda, and their sailing schooner fit perfectly into The Dinner Key anchorage. (Our friend Deb
Ball said about our boat Dursmirg, “I always thought of Dursmirg as a strange and different boat until I saw it
anchored at Dinner Key”.)
The Dinner Key/Coconut Grove anchorage has a long history as the crossroads of the world sailing community
dating back to the world-renowned sailor, Joshua Slocum who made Coconut Grove his very last port of call back in
1909 at age 65. He set sail out into the waters of the Bermuda Triangle from Dinner Key and vanished, not leaving a
trace.
Some years later Pan American Airlines developed Dinner Key as their “flying boat” fleet headquarters.
Starting back in 1933 the Miami seaplane base was established to service Pan Am’s Central America destinations.
This lasted until after World War II. In 1950 Pan American Airlines turned over to the city of Miami the entire piece of
real estate that they had developed and dredged. The city then turned it into their city hall and also a large marina.
Within the barrier islands that protected and sheltered the large harbor developed by Pan American Airlines was the
sizeable Miami City Marina with 100% occupancy and a long waiting list. Many of the dock spaces were filled with
year round live-a-board boaters who were getting the best dockage deal anywhere in Florida, so competition for
these dockage slips was fierce.
The Dinner Key Sailing Club occupied a vast portion of this protected harbor with their sizeable number of moorings
systematically laid out and their clubhouse. Over the years, we had several friends that moored their boats there
whom you will meet later on in this volume.
Between the Miami City Marina and the Dinner key sailing Club was a public boat launching dock, commercial vessel
dockage that catered to the local bay shrimpers and a sailboat rental. The shrimp boat docks had a bad reputation
for being a rough and tumble hang out not friendly to strangers but we knew that these fishermen who fished nights
out on the bay for live shrimp worked long and hard for a meager return on their investment. The little shallow draft
boats of the bay fishermen were mostly rusty raggedy worn out and patched no frills little vessels that just limped
along and provided nothing more than enough cash flow for fuel…a sorry lot.
Next to the shrimp docks was the menace of Dinner Key. This was the sailboat rental where want-to-be neophyte
sailors paid by the hour to be captains of their own boat. The local name for these boats was universally known as
the “idiot boats” and the renters were known as the “idiots”. (Read about the idiots in chapter 9)
In the mid 1970s, you could always count on seeing several blue-water globetrotting sailing vessels anchored
amongst the wildest range of things that float anchored at Dinner Key. On the low end of the scale were “the
rentals”. Some enterprising slumlord rounded up a half dozen or so of the area derelict but marginally floating boats.
These were the kind of boats that he undoubtedly was paid to tow away and he anchored them at Dinner Key. When
I say anchored, I use the term loosely because the anchors were cement blocks secured with 3/8-inch poly pot-warp.
(Pot-warp is what the lobster fishermen use to secure their marker floats to their traps.) Rent was actually collected
on these things that had 100% occupancy until the first winter windstorm raged through south Florida. Some of the
rentals sank fast; others became a huge nuisance when their cement block anchors dragged through the
anchorage crashing into all of the downwind boats in their path on their way to the beach. That was the end of that
enterprise and the derelict vessels were mostly abandoned to let Mother Nature and her marine bugs, the teredos
feast on the old boards.
Bubba used to say about his boat the Jaeger, “the reason that the boat still floats is because of a balance of nature.
There is a battle going on, with a stand-off, the termites that are eating the topsides versus the teredos in the
bottom side, the teredos and termites are holding hands.
Another element of the anchorage was the live-aboard population that with the exception of one powerboat were all
sailors. Some were in for the season with their kids in school, others semi-transients that were home aboard their
boats whether anchored anyplace on earth or out sailing in the briny blue waters of the high seas.
The mix of boats and boaters continuously changed and politics and the economy were the two driving forces for
putting together this like-minded accumulation of adventurers; and there we were along with our dear friends Bubba
and Linda.
Jane and I got a tour of “The Grove” by Bubba who looked and dressed the part of the “go to sea hippie”; the old
salt sailor with his bushy full beard and his definitely long graying hair topped off with a well-worn dark blue Greek
sailors cap…the mark of the real hard-core sailing class. Our tour guide’s outfit consisted of sandals and cut-offs
coupled with Bubba’s big infectious cannabis smile and we were off for the local’s only tour of the 1970s Grove
where Bubba was on a first name basis with the hard core group.
Infamous quotes: (Profound quotes and deep thoughts?)
From my friend Bubba Schill; “I don’t know what’s wrong with me; all I can think about is sex!”
The Grove was a world apart from anything we had encountered in all of our travels up to this time. It was like some
kind of time warp of a different dimension resembling a scene out of the “Twilight Zone: health food stores staffed by
the hanging out hippies sporting tie-dyed tee shirts, bib overalls, beads and sandals, long scraggily hair and scruffy
beards and that unmistakably far-out, spaced out, shit-eating grin of the cannabis crowd whose redundantly
repetitive exclamation was; “far out man!”
A description of the standard 1970s hippie women working in these health food stores has to include hair: hairy
legs, hairy armpits and unkempt, uncut mange of head hair gave the appearance of sleeping in the hayloft out in the
barn. They wore long cotton dresses that weren’t ironed, fully crumpled and thoroughly creased with wrinkles. Dirty
fingernails and leather sandals were off set by macramé-beaded necklaces adorned with strange seeds and curious
seashells.
Bird feathers were added to accentuate the adornments of the dropout hippies making their statement that they
were all different…but all dressed exactly the same!
The Grove health food stores like “Oak Feed” were a large part of the area attraction with bulk bins and open
barrels where brown rice, nuts and seeds were sold and touted to be all natural.
Dozens of exotic scents of incense were there; coconut, clove, cinnamon, and tropical fruit aromas wafted through
the air from the slow burning scented punk of the incense. I always figured that the primary use of these fragrances
were to mask the aroma of the ever present cannabis of the south Florida air.
Inside the health food stores you were likely to find a variety of teas then popular amongst the back to the earth
crowd. One gadget we found very useful that was a big hit with the live aboard boaters of the day was a neat little
stainless steel cooking device for steaming vegetables in a stovetop pot. Made on short legs this perforated sheet
metal device had a series of fold out parts resembling an opening flower that allowed it to fit nicely into various sized
pots. We not only loved it but also used it all the rest of our boating career until our microwave days arrived.
The health food store patrons were faithful purchasers and readers of a helpful monthly publication known as the
Mother Earth News. Always to be found in these health food stores, this publication gave helpful hints on organic
gardening, harvesting and preserving food without chemical preservatives, solar homes and timely tips on putting up
your harvest. The Mother Earth News was a must read for “The Grove” health food store patrons.
Then came the “Bible” of the dropout crowd: The Whole Earth Catalog was a huge compendium of essentials for the
alternative lifestyle and where to get them. Later we even saw the Last Whole Earth Catalog, with its fatalistic title it
touted to have the A-Z list of indispensable items required by the back to nature drop out crowd.
Across the street from one of “The Grove” health food stores was “The Pot Shop”. No this was not a pots and pans
store or a garden pot store. This pot store featured all the accessories and paraphernalia that you needed for the
high times and to blow your mind; roach clips, pipes, hookahs and various brands of cigarette papers to facilitate the
smokers needs.
In the early 1970s Coconut Grove and Dinner Key didn’t fit with anywhere else in the civilized world. This southern
suburb of Miami had become the transitory home to the drop out, spaced out, free loving stoned out cannabis crowd
with a whole new lingo. Lid, roach clip, reefer, snort a line, stoned; “far out man” and “heavy trip man” were the
crowd’s expletives. The “Beat Generation” of the 1950s evolved from the beatniks to the peaceniks.
Far removed from traditional Main Street America “The Grove” attracted the offbeat residents and shops alike: with
a sex shop, art galleries, used bookstores, wine and beer supplies and even a dark dingy seedy bar filled with
patrons that made our friend Bubba look like “Mr. Conservative” and where Bubbas oil paintings were on display.
The collection of art works were of the current crowd that were into psychedelic mind altering substances that lent a
bazaar disconnect ability to reality that we non-junkies just had to say “wow” to. (Bubba had many hidden talents
and his outrageous personality was spontaneous. I will never forget Bubba’s response to a young girl that was
definitely staring at him; “What’s the matter little girl? You don’t like my face? Well, fuck it!”)
“The Grove” Winn-Dixie store was where Bubba got his 79 cent a six-pack of Fischer’s beer and ale, a store brand
made in Allendale, Florida that wasn’t all that bad…price was a persuasive influence on our taste back in those
days. Seventy-nine cents would buy you a half gallon of ice cream and we found that their coffee ice cream was
totally irresistible and many times after several weeks out sailing in the Keys, we would bring our spoons and sit in
the parking lot and divide and eat a whole half gallon between just Jane and I.
A paella ready mix came in a box with all the ingredients needed for a meal for around a dollar. Jane would buy
these mixes and add fresh seafood, extra stuff and a few spices to turn out a rainy day meal when we were
underway sailing.
The afternoon after Bubba’s guided tour of “The Grove”, Jane and I were aboard Jaeger visiting with Bubba when
he proudly showed us around his vessel to see his latest upgrades and his latest endeavor; wine making. Jane
examined Bubba’s vat of passion fruit wine and pronounced it ready to bottle about the same time that Linda came
home from her waitress job at Montie’s famous waterfront restaurant and bar. Jane pointed out that the wine would
need to be strained before it was bottled. Once again, Bubba pulled one of his totally outrageous capers. Bubba
told Linda to remove her panty hose; this was to be the wine filter…sanitation out the window! (The wine actually
came out OK though it was somewhat of a psychological barrier to drink it knowing the history of its production.)
While Linda worked her waitress job at Montie’s restaurant Bubba had his days to pursue his passions at his
undisturbed leisure.
Oil painting was one of his natural talents but he had taken up woodcarving or whittling. With tons of exotic tropical
woods free and abundant around “The Grove” making spoons and bowls was his new passion and he got his
boating neighbors started in a competition to create them. I also took up the pastime because woodcarving was one
of my interests from childhood. Soon every galley in the anchorage was overstocked with wooden spoons, ladles
and bowls. (To this day we still have and use some of those utensils inspired by Bubba.)
Some of the surviving wooden spoons that Jane and I whittled after being inspired by our friend Bubba.
This bowl I carved from a block of wood of unknown origin found at Dinner Key. I have never positively
identified the type of wood. The wood was hard as rock and proved a real challenge to work with but my
efforts yielded a treasure we have used over these many years and it now sits on my desk here in
Mexico as I type this.
I carved this bowl from a solid block of wood found on the beach down in the Florida Keys. It measures
4 by 8 ½ -inches and has melted wax on the inside so that Jane could use it as a waterproof planter for
her onboard kitchen garden. We still have it and use it to this day in Jane’s office.
Here at Dinner Key like everyplace that Bubba went he automatically took up the position as the community leader
and spokesman. Bubba always spoke with authority and had a take-charge type of personality. He outspokenly
stated his standards: “Never pay more than $10.00 for a dinghy or $100.00 for a car. Up to this point in his life, I
believe that he had stuck to those stated principles. We did however notice that it was Linda that had gotten the
shop manual and a book on diesel engines and then went ahead and tuned, calibrated, polished and painted their
boat’s diesel engine. Linda was also the only one that could start their $100.00 dandy car, which we used to take
trips down to the old dirigible base south of town to harvest avocados and mangos. In addition, we made other
jaunts around Miami and out to Miami Beach to eat at the Jewish restaurants and take in vaudeville shows.
Bubba with his outspoken anti-dinghy boat motor rhetoric ironically wound up with a dinghy boat motor. This paradox
came about when Bubba received a brand new British Seagull brand outboard motor as a gift from his dear friend
Sanders from St.Augustine. (You will learn more about their long and loyal friendship in volume 4. “The Rogues of
St. Augustine and Other Social Misfits”.)
Bubba had a special affection for that motor that was not just a motor but a special token of his friendship with his
life long friend Sanders.
One blustery spring day as the waves in the bay were whipped up into a steep white capped chop Jane and I were
over to Jaeger visiting Bubba and Linda. As we all sat on the deck exchanging our stories of recent doings Bubba
began to tell us about the gift that he had just received and how much it meant to him. Then his face went slack with
terrified shock as he looked out at his tethered dinghy bouncing and bobbing in the morning’s pounding waves off
the stern of their boat. There sat the little white dinghy without the motor. It wasn’t two seconds before Bubba was
overboard. He didn’t have to take his pants off because he never wore any aboard his boat. To the bottom he went
and stayed down so long that we all thought that we would need to attempt a rescue. Then he surfaced with motor in
hand. He washed it in fresh water, put it back on the dinghy and began to try to start it. (The British Seagull motors
were world renowned by the sailing set for their simplicity and reliability. They were absolutely no-frills simplicity and
had the appearance of having been assembled completely from someone’s home spare plumbing parts collection.
(No re-wind to start just a rope wound around the exposed flywheel and pulled just like the very first outboard motors
from pre-WWII.) So, there was Bubba relentlessly winding the start rope around the flywheel and pulling.
(From my personal experience I wouldn’t have given Bubba a one in a million chance of starting that engine without
first cleaning and drying and recalibrating the breaker points.)
Bubba’s relentless and exuberant persistence finally paid off after five minutes or so; that strange little Seagull
sputtered and sputtered and then burst back into life.
Bubba and Linda, Jane and I made many a jaunt around the Miami area in Bubba’s $100.00 dandy jalopy that
needed Linda to start it. On rainy afternoons, a favorite was Miami Beach where we would splurge for lunch at Wolfie’
s for their kosher cuisine and then for a buck we would take in the afternoon matinee. The matinee was a whole
afternoons worth of entertainment. The vaudeville show featuring the old timers of the industry with their corny one-
liners and their song and dance routines got our spirits up and made us laugh. The shows would wind up with some
3rd rate B-movie like “The Big Bus” that would have been better off soon forgotten but they were so distinctly dumb
that they left an everlasting remembrance.
‘The Grove” had a library with evening movies and an extensive collection of sailing books that we took full
advantage of.
The most impressive show of all was definitely at the Dade County run “Space Transit Planetarium”. It was built back
in 1966 and featured a wonderfully inspirational program by Isaac Asimov entitled “Child of The Universe”. Jane and
I paid several memorable visits there enjoying its rousing and moving message that lingers in our minds to this day.
That same Christmas Bubba told us that he wanted to take us to a party at his sister’s place so that we could meet
more of his family. We always had a good time with Bubba and Linda so it was natural to accept the invitation. The
time was set and Jane and I waited at the dinghy boat docks. No Bubba or Linda; an hour passed without them
showing up and we figured for whatever reason we had been stood up. It was Christmas Eve and we would make the
best of it and decided to go up to Lum’s Coconut Grove Restaurant next to the public library for dinner. Well, would
you believe that just about the time that we got ready to place our order, in came Bubba looking for us. Sincerely
sorry for the delay he insisted that we just had to do this Christmas party together. Away we all went in his $100.00
dandy to Bubba’s sister’s home.
It turned out that Bubba’s sister lived in the lap of luxury in a palatial palace with all the decadent frills. Bubba’s ratty
old jalopy was conspicuously out of place in the driveway but that didn’t bother Bubba or Linda who melded right into
the group who were all really well on their way to total inebriation when we arrived. The straightest looking person in
the entire group turned out to be Bubba’s gay brother who was a hairdresser.
As soon as Bubba got a few drinks into himself he got into a high-pitched verbal shouting match with the in-laws and
outlaws. His cousin was a hotheaded big-mouthed loud Italian Mafioso type who wound up telling Bubba that he
could have Bubba rubbed-out.
Bubba just wouldn’t shut up and finally left the party in a huff. That wasn’t the end of the Christmas Eve festivities
and we next went cruising off in Bubba’s $100.00 dandy to Linda’s sisters house. This place was even bigger and
fancier than Bubba’s sister’s place. By this time, Bubba had cooled down a little and we had a nice quiet visit with
Linda’s mother who we knew from St. Augustine.
Somehow, Bubba’s cousin’s husband was still on Bubba’s mind and he went into a tirade about Italians.
This is where we all ran out of steam and collapsed and then snoozed away the rest of the night. (Note; shortly after
our night at Linda’s sister’s place, it blew up…it was a meth lab.)
Coconut Grove on garbage pick up day was a bonanza for all the boaters from the Dinner Key anchorage because
of the tremendous extravagance of the neighborhood…the height of decadence. The residents threw out
everything. I can still remember a funny scene of our friend Warren Brown from the schooner Our Dream fighting
with a front end loader that was picking up trash and Warren was there tugging on a piece of chicken wire that he
wanted to fabricate fish traps with…Warren won.) That picture was worth a thousand words.
I have to mention here one of Bubba’s old friends from Jacksonville to lead you into chapter 9. He must have
indulged in the same mind altering substances as Bubba because his oil paintings contained similar depth and
scope.
Dave McDougal showed up at Coconut Grove in an old Ford van that he called home. Dave had wandered the state
in his old van and managed over time to get kicked out of everyplace that he had set up camp.
Dave liked Bubba’s boating life and that inspired him to get his own live-aboard boat and join the anchored out
crowd. Somehow as eccentric as Dave was he didn’t stand out at Dinner Key and Coconut Grove in the 1970s.
Dave moved aboard his 19-foot sailboat that he would now call home.
next chapter
Miami is a tropical seaport city of glitter and glitz warmed by the Gulf Stream waters.
An isolated sleepy little bug infested jungle town in 1896 was incorporated with a population of 260.
One year later in 1897 Henry Flagler brought his Florida East Coast Railroad to town and the population explosion
began in earnest.
By the time of the real estate boom in the 1920s the influx of immigrants was an astonishing 4000 persons per day
and Pan American Airlines began flights to Latin America from Miami.
In 1926 a killer hurricane flattened Miami and sent seagoing freighters into the city center.
A friend of ours from ST. Augustine, the father-in-law to the famous Jimmie Ponce, had been stationed at the
prominent lighthouse near the south end of Key Biscayne, Fowey Rocks Light, during that killer hurricane of 1926
and his story was incredible, fascinating and captivating. The description of the wind building, the structure
trembling, the water rising and the heroic efforts made by him and his associates who kept a generator set operating
throughout the storm that gave every indication of carrying all of them away to the raging sea still haunts us. The
lighthouse workers wrestled their generator up three flights of stairs within the structure just ahead of the oncoming
rise of tidal flood and kept the lighthouse light going throughout that entire storm.
Fowey Rocks Lighthouse
The next year in 1927 Chicago-land mobster Al Capone came to town and that was just the tip of the iceberg with
crime in Florida. The pirates of old had little to plunder in Florida but now the robber barons, flim-flamers and skim-
scammers would take crime to new unprecedented levels fleecing newcomers without using guns.
This would usher in the new age of “slickers” that used crony capitalism, nepotism and political extortion to
redistribute the wealth.
(Descendants of the Pirates and Conquistadors-it was now the little guys verses big guys) The big guys own all the
politicians up to and including the President of the United States and the little guys just get shot up and jailed so that
they wouldn’t get in on the lucrative vice businesses.
Richard Nixon and his good pal Bebe Rebozo were involved in several Miami area land transactions that stirred up
questions of impropriety.
Jane and I visited one of those controversial places on April 13th 1974 at the invitation of the park rangers that
invited us to an Easter dinner at the old club house on the south end of the Biscayne National Park at Adams Key
next to Elliot Key where Gar Woods and many of his rich racy society set crony eccentrics whose fortunes were
acquired by dubious means used to hang out.
Jane and I felt like intruders in this ghost filled sanctuary of the rich and famous but at the same time we felt
privileged to visit in this historical spot that was scheduled for demolition by the National Park Service that year and
would be no more.
Situated on the south end of Biscayne Bay, these Keys were a continuation of the string of islands beginning in the
Miami area and extending south and then west to Key West and then on out to the Dry Tortugas.
Though we were very happy that this National Seashore was set aside for the public, somehow the Nixon-Rebozo
connection cast some doubt about the cleanliness of the transaction.
The Biscayne National Monument Park was a plus for the state of Florida. But Nixon’s closing of the cross Florida
barge canal, (connecting Jacksonville directly to the Gulf of Mexico near Crystal River) which was not only fully
funded but had been completed with the bridges, locks, and even channel markers awaiting the flow of marine traffic
had to be a step back toward taking America in the direction of third world status.
The only reasoning that we could ever figure for this political chicanery was that the then powerful Miami land
developer, Bebe Rebozo, who was at the time “in bed” with President Richard Nixon pressured Nixon to put through
the closure because the canal would divert some business away from Miami where Rebozo made his fortune in real
estate and banking.
Bebe Rebozo was born in 1912 the 9th child of nine whose father was a cigar maker in Tampa and of Cuban decent.
Voted the best looking in his 1930 high school class he went on to work as a steward for Pan American Airways
headquartered at Dinner Key in south Miami. In 1943 he became a navigator and helped deliver airplanes to North
Africa during the war. From there he next went on to purchase a gas station and then get into the tire recapping
business.
Buying under developed land he got his start in the real estate business and later banking.
In 1968 he listed his net worth at $673, 000 and several years later after converting from a Democrat to a
Republican his net worth was listed at $4,000,000.
Nixon, Rebozo and a man named Smathers invested in a land speculation deal and purchased Fisher’s Island in
Miami and planned a causeway. Nixon got out of the deal in 1970 at a huge profit.
A publication named “Newsday” did an expose on this: Nixon was then furious and denied “Newsday” any
Whitehouse press privileges nor allowed them to accompany the president on foreign trips.
Two years later the Washington Post carried a story: Rebozo cashed a $91,500 stolen check in his bank. He then
sued the Post for libel and $1,000,000. The case was settled quietly out of court. Rebozo’s bank slogan was; “where
other banks have branches we have roots”.
Bebe Rebozo bought the San Clemente, California estate for Richard Nixon for $650,000…for love of country?
Nixon and Rebozo were close neighbors on Key Biscayne and when Nixon was in Miami everyone knew because no
boats were allowed within about two miles of Key Biscayne. The security was tight with helicopters swooping and
hovering around the Key day and night. A large platform had been constructed just outside of the entry to the small
harbor where Nixon’s home was located as a helicopter landing pad. We got almost blown out of the water by those
helicopters when we went sailing anywhere out on Biscayne Bay.
One Sunday afternoon we were out joy-riding in a friends van and the owner Dave McDougal decided that he
wanted to go over to Key Biscayne to Dick Nixon’s house and pay him a visit. Our friends Bubba and Linda Schill
were also along. We were all surprised when we got as far as the driveway of Nixon’s home before being stopped
by the secret police. McDougal got belligerent and insistent about talking to Nixon and all of the rest of us just
shrank down in disbelief with the thought that for sure we would all be going off and doing some time for this caper.
In the end McDougal was finally bullied away but we did park in Nixon’s driveway for some time. (McDougal was a
social misfit like the rest of us “boat people” and I have some interesting stories about him later on in this volume
and also in volume 4.)
*
A new era for Miami began when Fidel Castro took over power in Cuba. Along with the doctors, lawyers and other
professional persons that fled the tyranny of Castro also came a flood of common folk eager to escape. Like the
majority of Cubans, they were industrious and very hard working.
The Miami Cubans went wild with their avowed and open hatred for Fidel Castro and all he stood for. Long hair and
beards made for instant hatred.
When Jane and I first arrived in Miami aboard our boat Dursmirg in the early 1970s we were surprised at this open
hostility that manifested itself in Miami’s downtown Bay Front Park where the Cuban exiles were giving free hair cuts
to all the unwilling long-hairs that they could find. We found it ironic that after just leaving the oppressive Cuban
regime where Castro had just rounded up nearly 25,000 gays and sent them off to hard labor in concentration
camps resembling the German Nazi’s at Auschwitz that these Miami Cubans would then engage in similar oppression
in their new and adopted country.
This made me think of an ironic observation I have made after reading many a history book. The first thing that a
slave will do after overthrowing their master is to go out and get himself a slave.
In April of 1959, Fidel Castro traveled to Washington on an unofficial visit. Castro was stood up by President
Eisenhower who opted to play golf rather than meet with him and sent Vice President Nixon to meet with him. Nixon
did have a three-hour meeting with Castro and displayed an instant dislike to the bearded Castro and wouldn’t even
shake his hand. By the time Castro finished his tour with no pledges of assistance or loans he knew that the
Eisenhower administration had already decided against him.
(I can still distinctly remember Castro’s appearance on the late night TV show of Jack Parr when Jack made several
wise cracks about “The Batista Flea/Flee”.) Castro was welcomed to the show like an arriving folk hero with hoopla
and backslapping and had no problem with speaking English, something he would later on rarely do.
Eisenhower’s parting shot when leaving office to President Kennedy was; “The United States cannot allow the
Castro government to continue to exist in Cuba.”
Jorge Mas Canosa would turn out to be the most powerful politically of these Cuba immigrants to land in Miami. He
got his humble beginnings as a dishwasher starting out at the hotel Fontainebleau on Miami Beach and later worked
as a milk deliveryman. By the time he died in 1994 at the age of 58 he was worth $400 million and a company he
formed, Mas Tec Inc., was valued at over $700 million.
Jorge Mas Canosa was referred to as a mobster, a gangster and would definitely make Al Capone seem tame by
comparison. He had close ties to several presidents: Reagan, Bush and Clinton all had connections to this the
slickest of “slicksters” amongst the Miami Cuban community.
In the war of words over the years Fidel Castro said of Mas Canosa; “Miami is in the stronghold of a fascist Mafia”.
Also; “un bicho malo nunca murere” or “a bad bug never dies”.
Jorge Mas Canosa boastfully said; “I am non-violent? No, I am pro-violence. I think that Castro should be overthrown
by a revolution!”
“The Israeli lobby buys Democrats and rents Republicans; the Cubans buy Republicans and rent Democrats.”
Mas Canosa referred to Americans as “Gringos” and said this when asked if he thought that the Americans would
take over Cuba after Castro’s departure; “That’s bullshit! Mierda! Crap! They haven’t even been able to take over
Miami. If I have kicked them out of here, how could they possibly take over my country?”
“The road to Havana runs through Managua.” (After his involvement with Oliver North and the Iran-Contras,)
“I stand with the president of the United States”
A quote from one of Mas Canosa’s ex-partners, Raúl Masvidal; “This guy has two agendas: to be president of Cuba
for life…and to make more money.”
Known as; “El Jefe” or (the boss) Jorge Mas Canosa’s fellow Miami Cubans had a slogan and chant that went like
this; “Fidel Castro, Mas Canosa…la misma cosa” or “Fidel Castro, Mas Canosa…the same thing”.
In 1960 Mas Canosa fled to Miami and hooked up with the CIA financed anti-Castro groups in South Florida. He
played a role in the Bay of Pigs invasion as a squad leader and when the invasion failed he fled back to Miami.
Following the Bay of Pigs invasion he joined the U.S. Army; he was soon commissioned as a second lieutenant. He
went to Fort Benning, Georgia and trained with the exile elite being instructed in intelligence, clandestine operations
and propaganda. At Fort Benning he became close with two men who would remain lifelong friends, Felix Rodriguez
and Luis Posada Carriles. Both would be CIA operatives in the Iran-Contra affair. The former would participate in the
murder of Che Guevara; the latter would be Fidel Castro’s most persistent would-be assassin, bombing a Cuban
bound airliner that killed 73 youths. For this he received a slap on the back and an unconditional pardon from the
Americans.
When it became clear that the second invasion of Cuba would never happen, Mas Canosa returned to Miami.
Jorge Mas Canosa got deeply involved with two CIA backed counter revolutionary anti- Castro groups in the 1960s
that included; RECI or (Cuban Representation in Exile) and COUR or (Commandos of the Unites Revolutionary
Organization).
Schooled at Fort Benning, Georgia and the School of the Americas, nearby that specialized in torture and sabotage,
Mas Canosa and Luis Posada Carriles plus 212 other exiles chosen by the CIA anxiously prepared for the second
invasion of Cuba that never came. The schooling wasn’t wasted however and would be used throughout Mas
Canosa’s life to further his cause both economically and politically.
RECI was an alliance of twenty extreme anti-Castro dedicated militants such as Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles
and Ignacio and Guillermo Novo. Pepin Bosch from the Bacardi group and his associates financed this group.
Jorge Mas Canosa also had strong ties to the Miami newspaper business along with being a radio broadcast
announcer at Radio Swan, the CIA anti-Castro propaganda station. From 1981 until his death, Jorge Mas Canosa
was the sole chairman of radio and TV Marti (the government sponsored and financed anti-Castro propaganda
network) and ran it as his personal empire. With an iron hand he disposed of colleagues and associates and even
directors at the whim of his will.
His power extended to deciding who would run for office, receive government contracts and even survive in Miami
and Dade County.
Many large businesses were afraid not to be in business with Mas Canosa because of the fact that he just might be
the next president of Cuba.
By 1990, with his close ties to Presidents Reagan and Bush, Mas Canosa arrogantly viewed himself as the emperor
of Miami, soon to lead the largest island state in the Caribbean.
“Mas Canosa led the perfect double life; he was running covert military raids against Cuba while denouncing
violence as an option”
Gaeton Fonzi, a former investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations said about Mas Canosa;
“Mas Canosa was born and bred by the CIA and was a master of psychological warfare,”
More than just, “medio chuecado” or a little crooked in business dealings Mas Canosa always got what he wanted;
bamboozling his partner out of a cable television company unremorsefully was all in a day’s work.
Congressman Charles Rangel of New York witnessed how far Mas Canosa would go and how much power he
wielded.
One day Mas Canosa paid Charles Rangel a surprise visit. Rangel said that Mas Canosa held up an imaginary jar of
honey and said; “If you cooperate with me you get the honey. Otherwise, I hit you with the jar.”
Rangel set up a meeting with the FBI and filed a complaint…The FBI downplayed the threat as a rhetorical gesture
and dropped the investigation. (You just can’t beat that kind of political power and Mas Canosa trumped Rangel.)
Crime was everywhere present in Miami and the city had gotten a notorious international reputation that was well
deserved.
Bombings, shootings and subversive political pressures were the rule. I have often said that; “if the Mexicans wanted
to take lessons in corruption they would have to come to Florida”.
There was so much dirty drug money floating around Miami at the time that we read many of the Miami banks were
shuffling stacks and bales of money around with front end loaders.
Our friend, Nira Brown, used to jokingly say that; “in Monroe County you could become a druggie by osmosis.”
(Monroe County is the county where the Florida Keys are located, south of Miami and Dade County.)
The national crime scandal took on such grand proportions that a TV series was done based on the subject called,
“Miami Vice”.
Jane and I absolutely loved Cuban food and the Cuban community along Calle Ocho in “Little Havana”, the heart of
the Cuban section of downtown Miami.
We never missed an opportunity to frequent our favorite Cuban restaurants and to savor their specialties anytime
we were anywhere near Miami.
One beautiful full moonlit spring evening Jane and I together with our sailing friends Bud and Joyce Partridge took a
trip down into Little Havana to have dinner at one of our favorite restaurants called, “La Esquina de Tejas”. (This
happened to also be where Ronald Reagan cemented his relations with the Cuban community.)
The postcard above was given to us by the owners of the Esquina de Tejas Restaurant in Little Havana.
It commemorates the time when President Ronald Reagan was a guest in the restaurant.
For quality and quantity at honest prices the Cubans make stiff competition for their competitors and are real
entrepreneurial capitalists at heart.
After our leisurely multi-course meal we went out on the street and discovered that the evening was just too lovely to
head back home so we opted for a stroll down Flagler Street to enjoy the atmosphere of the full moonlit night.
The evening was delightful and we had read that the Miami police had just instituted a new anti-crime initiative to
clean up this part of town so we struck off strolling with measured inquisitiveness east toward the Miami River. As we
walked along we were encouraged by the presence of many friendly and reassuring police who waved and greeted
us along the way.
We got as far as the Miami River and savored the moment that was just too good to be true and unanimously
decided that we should continue on toward the downtown section of Miami…it was such a lovely night and the town
just beckoned us to continue…so we did.
Heading east on Flagler Street we soon approached Miami Avenue and our walk was terrific.
At the corner of Flagler Street and Miami Avenue we were startled to be pushed up against the building by a
policeman who came running around the corner with his gun drawn as a large pickup truck with oversized wheels
smoking and spinning came screaming by with a bunch of men in the back all blasting away with machine guns.
Before we could all collectively piss in our pants the police officer explained to us that they were filming a sequence
for the television series, “Miami Vice”.
The most incredible thing about this was that this was all done in the actual city and they actually sat in traffic waiting
for the traffic light to turn from red to green to begin their filming sequence directly within the normal traffic.
We then stood by to watch as they did a retake of the same sequence, this time with sawed-off shotguns. The
second sequence was so life like that we had a hard time believing that it was only a mocked up filming.
On a related subject, sometime later Jane and I were down in the Florida Keys just south of Miami on Card Sound
Road that leads off to Key Largo via a toll road visiting our friends Bob and Beverly Baker who had their fifty-four
foot ferro-cement sailboat tied there.
This was a wild frontier where nobody owned the land or paid any rent and just squatted along the causeway. Two
bars were there and doing a booming business while not complying with any governmental rules or regulations.
These open decrepit, dilapidated, rickety, rundown and ramshackle bars were more than just rough and tough and
had to have been thrown up with materials that had been scrounged from the local garbage dump.
I don’t think that any movie set could have possibly replicated these dwellings with this attention to crummy
authenticity.
In the early evening we watched as several large bus loads and some heavy laden trucks came rolling in and set up
to do some filming for two local area feature length movies that they were doing on location. Miami Vice and Karate
Girl
We watched with amazement the huge number of scripted actors and extras queuing up to take part in the filming.
The amount of equipment and work plus preparation in proportion to the amount of film actually being shot gave us
a new realization to the exorbitant extravagance that this industry poured into their productions.
(Note: to get a better perspective of this very real part of American history that is exquisitely documented and
descriptively narrated I highly recommend you read the following book; Cuba Confidential by Ann Louise Bardach. I
have this book listed in my recommended reading section also.)
CHAPTER 6 MIAMI DOWNTOWN
Miami downtown in the 1970s was in an explosive expansion driven by the recent influx of industrious Cubans and
they pulled the city out of a slump while the rest of the country was being beaten down by the financial impact of the
recent Arab oil embargo.
There was a feeling in the air that opportunity could be the key to the future through dedicated hard work and the
Cuban community with their close family oriented lifestyle put a positive spin on this end of the world.
Little mom and pop business establishments of all kinds sprang up throughout the downtown providing excellent
quality, craftsmanship and service that almost went overboard as they bent over backwards to satisfy the customer.
Viewed from afar, the most important structure in downtown Miami’s skyline was the federal government building. (In
later years, it was completely dwarfed by numerous surrounding skyscrapers.) But, in the 1970s the federal building
was the tallest and Burdines department store was second tallest in the heart of Miami’s downtown. All around
Burdines was where you changed busses for north, south, west and the beaches.
The downtown was filled with little Cuban restaurants with sidewalk coffee served through small slide open windows
where the fast moving Cubans would pause to slug down their specialty of Cuban coffee that required one cup of
coffee grounds to render a two ounce cup of this sweetened go-fast potion that was then chased by a glass of
water. That coffee is a specialty of the Cuban community and one of those small cups will definitely accelerate your
heart, bug out your eyes and make you talk fast just like the Cubans do.
I have to mention our love affair with the fabulous Cuban cuisine that does wondrous things with pork and seafood
using special marinades and copious quantities of garlic. Fried plantains called tostones, avocado salad, black
beans and rice known as Moros and Christianos, along with their specialty custard for desert called flan
accompanied with their special coffee have made Jane and I into regulars at a number of Little Havana’s now
famous restaurants.
Little Havana generally refers to an area west of the city center and over the Miami River. Flagler Street passes from
downtown through the neighborhood where the Cuban influence carries over to the most famous street in Little
Havana, Calle Ocho, or Eighth Street in English.
This made me think of a prominent sign I spotted in a Cuban store in Little Havana proudly proclaiming, “si hablamos
ingles”. Yes, we speak English.
In a tree shrouded park in Little Havana table after table is filed each day with Cuban men in deep concentration
pondering over their next move in their favorite game of dominos.
Jane and I became regular customers in a Cuban hardware store on 12th street in Little Havana. A&E Hardware was
packed to the ceiling with merchandise and the friendly owner and his wife proudly knew where every item was.
We discovered that they had a full inventory of spare parts for our little kerosene Primus cooking stove that was a
product of Sweden and evidently popular amongst the Cuban community in Miami.
We would bring our shopping list of hardware needs to A&E Hardware and if for some reason the owner couldn’t
supply our every need they would have us sit down while the wife or one of the sons would literally run out to scour
the neighborhood in order to fill our needs…we were impressed with just how eager they were to make us satisfied
and happy customers.
Jane standing on the sidewalk of Calle Ocho in Little Havana
We always looked forward to our trip to Little Havana. When we were in Miami we kept our boat at Dinner Key and
took the bus or bicycled to downtown for shopping and sampling foods in the countless restaurants.
In all of our many visits to the different Little Havana restaurants over the years I can’t ever remember having an
unpleasant dining experience. La Esquina de Tejas got most of our business though they had intense competition
from their competitors. Quality, quantity, service and very reasonable prices kept us coming back.
A store that catered to supplying to the mom and pop grocery stores and also sold institutional sized foods aimed at
the Latin community in downtown Miami was Canters. Jane was making her own tortillas and here she could
purchase ten pound tin cans of masa harina or corn flour specially ground for making tortillas. We found that
Canters was an ideal place for the cruising sailor to fit out.
On 27th avenue was located Miami’s most extensive marine hardware store, Crook and Crook. At the time they got
their price because most of their merchandise was aimed at yacht owners who mostly had more money than they
knew how to spend and the Miami area was just packed with yachts…mostly huge ones.
Jane and I often would go shopping there with our friend Fred Everson, a Canadian with a 50-foot plus yacht he
kept docked at the Dinner Key Marina in Coconut Grove. Without fail every time we would come out of Crock and
Crock Marine Hardware Store Fred would shake his head and exclaim, “I just discovered that I can’t afford to own a
yacht”.
Well, if you did own a yacht and weren’t rolling in dough you would inevitably wind up shopping at Simmons junkyard
out on Milam Dairy Road. We soon became such regulars here that we were in a first name basis with the owners.
The specialty of Simmons was the salvage of aircraft and they had everything associated with that industry of all of
the major carriers that flew in and out of the Miami area. Did you need a jet engine, row upon row of aircraft seats,
landing gear, upholstery material, plexi-glass, aluminum sheet, magnesium, stainless steel or even galley
equipment?
The inventory moved in and out fast and Jane and I always found essentials to make our sailing life even better at
super prices.
Stainless steel hardware was hard to find but it was available here no matter what our requirements were.
Jane would purchase whole rolls of upholstery material and all of the associated accessories to do whatever project
she might undertake.
We still have and use to this day a stainless steel coffee pot with an Eastern Airlines logo embossed on it that we
purchased there. That company has been out of business for many a year but that coffee pot still has no signs of
quitting. The handle died some time back and it now has a tropical wooden handle fashioned from a twisted root.
Our one-dollar purchase at Simmons has served us well.
Sanders Hardware store on 27th street was a regular stop for us because it was close to Coconut Grove.
Across the street from Sanders Hardware store was located a Greek restaurant where we first sampled feta cheese
Greek style.
South of the city center was located a huge plantation filled with towering ancient avocado and mango trees. During
World War II the plantation was used as a dirigible base and later abandoned and those trees got larger and larger
with no one to harvest their prolific crop until we came along. The group from the Dinner Key anchorage would go
out to the old dirigible base on a reconnaissance mission to harvest the “free fruit”. Jane and I were invited to tag
along and made many a trip that kept us well inventoried with those huge avocados that seemed to all get ripe at
once. I never did get tired of eating them. Besides guacamole, we discovered the Cuban secret of their avocado
salad, which was always out of this world. They marinated thinly sliced onions in key lime juice and put them over the
sliced avocado that was on its last stages of firmness. Lightly sprinkled with salt, this dish is elegant and simple if
you only know the secret of its preparation.
Bubba and Linda Schill, Dave McDougal and others like Tom and Travis would take turns driving the group. The
Arab oil embargo made frivolous driving unthinkable at that time.
Another effect of that Arab oil embargo was that kerosene became impossible to obtain and we used kerosene in
our lanterns, stove and refrigerator. We quickly discovered an alternative fuel that worked even better than
kerosene and that was mineral spirits that was obtained at the local paint store and was relatively cheap. It was not
long and a run was put on that commodity also, and it too became scarce.
We felt fortunate having bicycles for land transportation and our sails to carry us to wherever we cared to go while
the rest of the country was suffering with a multitude of petroleum related shortages and paying over $2.00 a gallon
for gasoline and standing in long lines to get it besides.
MIAMI RADIO
All the time that Jane and I were building our boat Dursmirg we completely gave up TV.
When I first met Jane, I owned five TV sets and we soon discovered that we definitely had better things to do with
our lives than watch TV. (Many people go through life mesmerized in a TV induced stupor and miss the best years
of their lives.)
As I many times later in life would say when people would ask; “how did you get your boat?” and I would reply; “we
got our boat for free” then they would ask; “well, how did you do that?” My stock reply was, “we just didn’t watch TV
for five years and applied those hours to making money and building our boat.”
Even though we did not watch TV all those years and even sailed away with none aboard, we used our radio
extensively for news, weather, and music. In Miami we discovered talk radio at its finest.
Radio in the Miami area in the 1970s was cutting edge entertainment featuring the best in the country outside of the
New York market. Chuck and Neal Rogers (live talk radio specializing in the local issues). Lynne Russell, (special
interest and the news programs). Larry King, (talk radio featuring big name entertainers plus the rich and famous).
Ethel Blum, (travel shows on Saturday mornings). Anita Bryant, (glorious self-righteous religious fervor and
wholesome Christian family values that came down hard on the gay movement. She was bankrolled and sponsored
by the Florida orange growers association and as a result, the standing joke at the time was; “orange juice makes
you queer”). WKAT, “cat with a K” was our most listened to radio station along with WDIO. Every night we would
crawl into our front berth and tune into Public Radio where the nightly program featured Mystery Theater. These
programs were very well done and would have been a big hit if they had been produced before the days of
television.
Public Radio and the Cuban propaganda stations filled the airways and rounded out the wide spectrum of choices
available to the area listeners.
The following is a radio skit that I remember hearing from the 1970s; At Miami Beach, there had been a problem
with a broken water main and the residents were cautioned to boil their drinking water before consuming it in the
event of contamination. The skit went like this; “Consider this, someday you may have to drink recycled sewage
water”…the reply was “Oh, No!” Then the announcer said; “But consider this, there might not be enough”… the
reply was “OH!!! NO!!!”
Note; We installed a wind-powered generator we purchased from the British manufacturer at the Miami Boat Show to
charge our batteries that put out 5 amps of current and that far exceeded what we could consume. (Photo of wind
generator)
We burned lots of lights and considered other possibilities for consuming some of our now free electricity.
Anchored in the deep-water anchorage December 12, 1976 at Dinner Key; you can see our newly
installed wind generator. Jane is chatting with some of our boating neighbors rafted alongside
Dursmirg. Mark and Judy Ross aboard their boat Song of Myself from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
At the Miami flea market one Saturday morning I happened to find a 12-volt television set and struck up a deal. Jane
looked at me with a blank look and asked; “what do you think you are going to do with that?”
We only used our new TV in our wheelhouse to view certain programs and used up our over abundance of free wind
generated electricity. Again, our belief was reaffirmed that TV was mostly a waste of time but it was a good
diversionary device that kept the masses off the waterways and out of other public places where we wanted to be
and made those places better for us.
CHAPTER 7 MIAMI BEACH
This little piece of real estate that is situated in eastern Dade County is in reality the northern most of the Florida
Keys. With the Atlantic Ocean and the warm waters of the Gulf Stream flanking its eastern shore this island has the
shallow waters of Biscayne Bay on its west side.
The island of Miami Beach also has the distinction of being the southern most end of the line for the very famous
highway A1A that traces Florida’s east coast all the way down from the Georgia border. Another prominent and
historical highway that also ends on Miami Beach on the southern end of Collins Avenue where A1A quits is Highway
41. Highway 41, also known as the “Tamiami Trail” as it crosses southern Florida connecting Miami with Naples via
the Florida Everglades before it turns north on its way across America all the way up to Marquette, Michigan on
Lake Superior.
A reason I happen to mention these two cross roads is because they have historical significance to me.
Back in the 1940s I first had the privilege of traversing both of these highways with my parents when they made
several trips to Florida by car. I have some very vivid descriptions of these two highways as I have described them
both in my autobiography.
Jane and I have driven both highway A1A and 41 throughout Florida and in the 1980s we actually decided to do a
back road across America trip and drove the entire length of Highway 41 all the way up into Upper-Michigan.
It is interesting that back in the 1940s there were no superhighways and Highway 41 was “the road to take to
Florida”, and it would take you all the way to Miami Beach.
***
I can’t mention Miami Beach without mentioning the most prominent inhabitants of the place, the Jewish community.
When we arrived with our boat Dursmirg back in the 1970s the tension with Cuban refugees and Cuba’s hostility
toward them and United States in general was at the point of open warfare.
The then prime minister of Israel, Golda Meir, made a proclamation that if Fidel Castro ever invaded Miami Beach
that she would consider that to be, “a direct assault on Israel”.
***
In the early 1970s Miami Beach was not by any means the high-rent district of Florida and just seemed to be on the
verge of slipping into the state of neglect.
Though we could find a pleasant neighborhood atmosphere with smallness of scale that possessed no franchise
eateries and only modest mom and pop businesses, Miami Beach had a unique life all of its own.
The atmosphere was captivating and charming in a reminiscent kind of way that mentally would take the visitor back
in time to some other place akin to the 1930s in a Jewish neighborhood in New York City. The restaurants like the
famous Wolfies on Collins Avenue were kosher and put out the very best of everything. The business was nonstop
at Wolfies and finding a table even in off hours was usually challenging but the service and attention to detail made
it worth the effort. We always went away with pleasant and lasting memories that beckoned us back.
Delicatessens would display temptations that were nearly irresistible and the standard was the corned beef on rye
with a kosher dill pickle. Also the cheese blitzes were very tasty and irresistible.
Entertainment was our favorite feature of Miami Beach and the matinee shows with their stand-up comics and
Vaudeville routines employed many of the top old-time original names from the heyday of Vaudeville. The prices
were definitely off-Broadway and too reasonable to pass up. “B” movies that had to have been cast-offs or discards
usually followed those wonderful live shows…but the price was absolutely, categorically and undeniably right.
Evenings a drive down Collins Avenue was like a visit to a tropical open-air old folks home.
The famous 1930s and 1940s “Art Deco” hotels that were in a state of just hanging on at this point and time would
be packed to capacity when the season was right. One feature that these hotels all shared was their large street
front patios lined with rocking chairs and interspersed with wheel chairs and each filled with some senior citizen that
had come south to warm their ancient bones in these warm tropical and balmy breezes. The most amazing thing of
all was that there were no vacancies in those chairs that were all crammed tightly with not an extra inch to spare.
Some of the estates fronting on the west side of Miami Beach along Biscayne Bay took opulence to the point of
decadence.
We were fortunate to get the royal tour of one magnificent bay front estate while it was still in the Allworth family; it
was later bequeathed to the University of Minnesota.
Jane’s uncle, Carl Pearson was the manager of the Allworth estate that covered more than one city block and
fronted on Biscayne Bay. Carl’s wife, Sonja was the chief cook there and they both were provided with their own
offices and also a lovely home over in North Miami at 105th Street North.
Occasionally Jane and I would bus from Dinner Key to visit Jane’s aunt and uncle who lived in North Miami. Our bus
trip would take us to downtown Miami where we changed busses in front of Burdines’s Department Store. Then we
traveled north through the roughest part of town called Liberty City. We would then repeat this process on our
return trip at one AM. Several years later, the crime problem became so acute in Miami that this trip was not even
safe in daylight let alone at one AM.
(I have to tell a story about an incident aboard a Miami bus back in the 1970s; a pleasant and helpful young man
boarded the city bus and sat next to a lady that was heavily adorned with gold jewelry. The young man told the lady
that it wasn’t safe to wear all that expensive jewelry on the bus and that she should stick it in her purse. She thanked
him and stowed her jewelry. At the next bus stop, the young man snatched her purse and fled.)
CHAPTER 8 MIAMI/DINNER KEY/COCONUT GROVE
Oh, by the way!
This is a good place to describe Coconut Grove back in the 1970s when the locals referred to it as merely, “The
Grove”. A timeline in American history is necessary to put this place in its proper prospective and paint a picture of
the divided and fragmented nation that was a product of the “free love 60s” when “the pill” and cannabis opened the
door to LSD and anything else that would yield “high-times”. The drop out mentality had begun in California and New
York by the new age hippies who went the extra mile to defy the establishment that was mom, apple pie and kill the
Gooks in Vietnam. Now the back-to-back Arab oil embargos and run away inflation caused by the Vietnam War
spending gave way to the next scandal, a presidential impeachment. There was plenty to divide the country and little
Coconut Grove became the home to the dropout sub-culture.
A southern suburb of Miami, Coconut Grove still possessed a sleepy tropical atmosphere from the bygone days
when it earned its name from the extensive coconut plantations. If you walked or bicycled through any of the many
parks or along Old Cutler Road leading south out of “The Grove” on windy afternoons you would be sure find the
ground strewn with coconuts. (We found this to be a bonanza and quickly found many uses for them. I found a quick
way to open them and Jane did the rest. She made coconut wine and shredded and roasted the meat.
It wasn’t long and we realized that we were going to make Dinner Key a regular stopping place on our sailing to and
from the Florida Keys so we expeditiously got a post office box and had a Miami address. (Over the course of 22
years of living in Florida, we actually had five different places we called home around the state.)
Back to Bubba and Linda at Dinner Key and Coconut Grove;
Somehow, Bubba, Linda, and their sailing schooner fit perfectly into The Dinner Key anchorage. (Our friend Deb
Ball said about our boat Dursmirg, “I always thought of Dursmirg as a strange and different boat until I saw it
anchored at Dinner Key”.)
The Dinner Key/Coconut Grove anchorage has a long history as the crossroads of the world sailing community
dating back to the world-renowned sailor, Joshua Slocum who made Coconut Grove his very last port of call back in
1909 at age 65. He set sail out into the waters of the Bermuda Triangle from Dinner Key and vanished, not leaving a
trace.
Some years later Pan American Airlines developed Dinner Key as their “flying boat” fleet headquarters.
Starting back in 1933 the Miami seaplane base was established to service Pan Am’s Central America destinations.
This lasted until after World War II. In 1950 Pan American Airlines turned over to the city of Miami the entire piece of
real estate that they had developed and dredged. The city then turned it into their city hall and also a large marina.
Within the barrier islands that protected and sheltered the large harbor developed by Pan American Airlines was the
sizeable Miami City Marina with 100% occupancy and a long waiting list. Many of the dock spaces were filled with
year round live-a-board boaters who were getting the best dockage deal anywhere in Florida, so competition for
these dockage slips was fierce.
The Dinner Key Sailing Club occupied a vast portion of this protected harbor with their sizeable number of moorings
systematically laid out and their clubhouse. Over the years, we had several friends that moored their boats there
whom you will meet later on in this volume.
Between the Miami City Marina and the Dinner key sailing Club was a public boat launching dock, commercial vessel
dockage that catered to the local bay shrimpers and a sailboat rental. The shrimp boat docks had a bad reputation
for being a rough and tumble hang out not friendly to strangers but we knew that these fishermen who fished nights
out on the bay for live shrimp worked long and hard for a meager return on their investment. The little shallow draft
boats of the bay fishermen were mostly rusty raggedy worn out and patched no frills little vessels that just limped
along and provided nothing more than enough cash flow for fuel…a sorry lot.
Next to the shrimp docks was the menace of Dinner Key. This was the sailboat rental where want-to-be neophyte
sailors paid by the hour to be captains of their own boat. The local name for these boats was universally known as
the “idiot boats” and the renters were known as the “idiots”. (Read about the idiots in chapter 9)
In the mid 1970s, you could always count on seeing several blue-water globetrotting sailing vessels anchored
amongst the wildest range of things that float anchored at Dinner Key. On the low end of the scale were “the
rentals”. Some enterprising slumlord rounded up a half dozen or so of the area derelict but marginally floating boats.
These were the kind of boats that he undoubtedly was paid to tow away and he anchored them at Dinner Key. When
I say anchored, I use the term loosely because the anchors were cement blocks secured with 3/8-inch poly pot-warp.
(Pot-warp is what the lobster fishermen use to secure their marker floats to their traps.) Rent was actually collected
on these things that had 100% occupancy until the first winter windstorm raged through south Florida. Some of the
rentals sank fast; others became a huge nuisance when their cement block anchors dragged through the
anchorage crashing into all of the downwind boats in their path on their way to the beach. That was the end of that
enterprise and the derelict vessels were mostly abandoned to let Mother Nature and her marine bugs, the teredos
feast on the old boards.
Bubba used to say about his boat the Jaeger, “the reason that the boat still floats is because of a balance of nature.
There is a battle going on, with a stand-off, the termites that are eating the topsides versus the teredos in the
bottom side, the teredos and termites are holding hands.
Another element of the anchorage was the live-aboard population that with the exception of one powerboat were all
sailors. Some were in for the season with their kids in school, others semi-transients that were home aboard their
boats whether anchored anyplace on earth or out sailing in the briny blue waters of the high seas.
The mix of boats and boaters continuously changed and politics and the economy were the two driving forces for
putting together this like-minded accumulation of adventurers; and there we were along with our dear friends Bubba
and Linda.
Jane and I got a tour of “The Grove” by Bubba who looked and dressed the part of the “go to sea hippie”; the old
salt sailor with his bushy full beard and his definitely long graying hair topped off with a well-worn dark blue Greek
sailors cap…the mark of the real hard-core sailing class. Our tour guide’s outfit consisted of sandals and cut-offs
coupled with Bubba’s big infectious cannabis smile and we were off for the local’s only tour of the 1970s Grove
where Bubba was on a first name basis with the hard core group.
Infamous quotes: (Profound quotes and deep thoughts?)
From my friend Bubba Schill; “I don’t know what’s wrong with me; all I can think about is sex!”
The Grove was a world apart from anything we had encountered in all of our travels up to this time. It was like some
kind of time warp of a different dimension resembling a scene out of the “Twilight Zone: health food stores staffed by
the hanging out hippies sporting tie-dyed tee shirts, bib overalls, beads and sandals, long scraggily hair and scruffy
beards and that unmistakably far-out, spaced out, shit-eating grin of the cannabis crowd whose redundantly
repetitive exclamation was; “far out man!”
A description of the standard 1970s hippie women working in these health food stores has to include hair: hairy
legs, hairy armpits and unkempt, uncut mange of head hair gave the appearance of sleeping in the hayloft out in the
barn. They wore long cotton dresses that weren’t ironed, fully crumpled and thoroughly creased with wrinkles. Dirty
fingernails and leather sandals were off set by macramé-beaded necklaces adorned with strange seeds and curious
seashells.
Bird feathers were added to accentuate the adornments of the dropout hippies making their statement that they
were all different…but all dressed exactly the same!
The Grove health food stores like “Oak Feed” were a large part of the area attraction with bulk bins and open
barrels where brown rice, nuts and seeds were sold and touted to be all natural.
Dozens of exotic scents of incense were there; coconut, clove, cinnamon, and tropical fruit aromas wafted through
the air from the slow burning scented punk of the incense. I always figured that the primary use of these fragrances
were to mask the aroma of the ever present cannabis of the south Florida air.
Inside the health food stores you were likely to find a variety of teas then popular amongst the back to the earth
crowd. One gadget we found very useful that was a big hit with the live aboard boaters of the day was a neat little
stainless steel cooking device for steaming vegetables in a stovetop pot. Made on short legs this perforated sheet
metal device had a series of fold out parts resembling an opening flower that allowed it to fit nicely into various sized
pots. We not only loved it but also used it all the rest of our boating career until our microwave days arrived.
The health food store patrons were faithful purchasers and readers of a helpful monthly publication known as the
Mother Earth News. Always to be found in these health food stores, this publication gave helpful hints on organic
gardening, harvesting and preserving food without chemical preservatives, solar homes and timely tips on putting up
your harvest. The Mother Earth News was a must read for “The Grove” health food store patrons.
Then came the “Bible” of the dropout crowd: The Whole Earth Catalog was a huge compendium of essentials for the
alternative lifestyle and where to get them. Later we even saw the Last Whole Earth Catalog, with its fatalistic title it
touted to have the A-Z list of indispensable items required by the back to nature drop out crowd.
Across the street from one of “The Grove” health food stores was “The Pot Shop”. No this was not a pots and pans
store or a garden pot store. This pot store featured all the accessories and paraphernalia that you needed for the
high times and to blow your mind; roach clips, pipes, hookahs and various brands of cigarette papers to facilitate the
smokers needs.
In the early 1970s Coconut Grove and Dinner Key didn’t fit with anywhere else in the civilized world. This southern
suburb of Miami had become the transitory home to the drop out, spaced out, free loving stoned out cannabis crowd
with a whole new lingo. Lid, roach clip, reefer, snort a line, stoned; “far out man” and “heavy trip man” were the
crowd’s expletives. The “Beat Generation” of the 1950s evolved from the beatniks to the peaceniks.
Far removed from traditional Main Street America “The Grove” attracted the offbeat residents and shops alike: with
a sex shop, art galleries, used bookstores, wine and beer supplies and even a dark dingy seedy bar filled with
patrons that made our friend Bubba look like “Mr. Conservative” and where Bubbas oil paintings were on display.
The collection of art works were of the current crowd that were into psychedelic mind altering substances that lent a
bazaar disconnect ability to reality that we non-junkies just had to say “wow” to. (Bubba had many hidden talents
and his outrageous personality was spontaneous. I will never forget Bubba’s response to a young girl that was
definitely staring at him; “What’s the matter little girl? You don’t like my face? Well, fuck it!”)
“The Grove” Winn-Dixie store was where Bubba got his 79 cent a six-pack of Fischer’s beer and ale, a store brand
made in Allendale, Florida that wasn’t all that bad…price was a persuasive influence on our taste back in those
days. Seventy-nine cents would buy you a half gallon of ice cream and we found that their coffee ice cream was
totally irresistible and many times after several weeks out sailing in the Keys, we would bring our spoons and sit in
the parking lot and divide and eat a whole half gallon between just Jane and I.
A paella ready mix came in a box with all the ingredients needed for a meal for around a dollar. Jane would buy
these mixes and add fresh seafood, extra stuff and a few spices to turn out a rainy day meal when we were
underway sailing.
The afternoon after Bubba’s guided tour of “The Grove”, Jane and I were aboard Jaeger visiting with Bubba when
he proudly showed us around his vessel to see his latest upgrades and his latest endeavor; wine making. Jane
examined Bubba’s vat of passion fruit wine and pronounced it ready to bottle about the same time that Linda came
home from her waitress job at Montie’s famous waterfront restaurant and bar. Jane pointed out that the wine would
need to be strained before it was bottled. Once again, Bubba pulled one of his totally outrageous capers. Bubba
told Linda to remove her panty hose; this was to be the wine filter…sanitation out the window! (The wine actually
came out OK though it was somewhat of a psychological barrier to drink it knowing the history of its production.)
While Linda worked her waitress job at Montie’s restaurant Bubba had his days to pursue his passions at his
undisturbed leisure.
Oil painting was one of his natural talents but he had taken up woodcarving or whittling. With tons of exotic tropical
woods free and abundant around “The Grove” making spoons and bowls was his new passion and he got his
boating neighbors started in a competition to create them. I also took up the pastime because woodcarving was one
of my interests from childhood. Soon every galley in the anchorage was overstocked with wooden spoons, ladles
and bowls. (To this day we still have and use some of those utensils inspired by Bubba.)
Some of the surviving wooden spoons that Jane and I whittled after being inspired by our friend Bubba.
This bowl I carved from a block of wood of unknown origin found at Dinner Key. I have never positively
identified the type of wood. The wood was hard as rock and proved a real challenge to work with but my
efforts yielded a treasure we have used over these many years and it now sits on my desk here in
Mexico as I type this.
I carved this bowl from a solid block of wood found on the beach down in the Florida Keys. It measures
4 by 8 ½ -inches and has melted wax on the inside so that Jane could use it as a waterproof planter for
her onboard kitchen garden. We still have it and use it to this day in Jane’s office.
Here at Dinner Key like everyplace that Bubba went he automatically took up the position as the community leader
and spokesman. Bubba always spoke with authority and had a take-charge type of personality. He outspokenly
stated his standards: “Never pay more than $10.00 for a dinghy or $100.00 for a car. Up to this point in his life, I
believe that he had stuck to those stated principles. We did however notice that it was Linda that had gotten the
shop manual and a book on diesel engines and then went ahead and tuned, calibrated, polished and painted their
boat’s diesel engine. Linda was also the only one that could start their $100.00 dandy car, which we used to take
trips down to the old dirigible base south of town to harvest avocados and mangos. In addition, we made other
jaunts around Miami and out to Miami Beach to eat at the Jewish restaurants and take in vaudeville shows.
Bubba with his outspoken anti-dinghy boat motor rhetoric ironically wound up with a dinghy boat motor. This paradox
came about when Bubba received a brand new British Seagull brand outboard motor as a gift from his dear friend
Sanders from St.Augustine. (You will learn more about their long and loyal friendship in volume 4. “The Rogues of
St. Augustine and Other Social Misfits”.)
Bubba had a special affection for that motor that was not just a motor but a special token of his friendship with his
life long friend Sanders.
One blustery spring day as the waves in the bay were whipped up into a steep white capped chop Jane and I were
over to Jaeger visiting Bubba and Linda. As we all sat on the deck exchanging our stories of recent doings Bubba
began to tell us about the gift that he had just received and how much it meant to him. Then his face went slack with
terrified shock as he looked out at his tethered dinghy bouncing and bobbing in the morning’s pounding waves off
the stern of their boat. There sat the little white dinghy without the motor. It wasn’t two seconds before Bubba was
overboard. He didn’t have to take his pants off because he never wore any aboard his boat. To the bottom he went
and stayed down so long that we all thought that we would need to attempt a rescue. Then he surfaced with motor in
hand. He washed it in fresh water, put it back on the dinghy and began to try to start it. (The British Seagull motors
were world renowned by the sailing set for their simplicity and reliability. They were absolutely no-frills simplicity and
had the appearance of having been assembled completely from someone’s home spare plumbing parts collection.
(No re-wind to start just a rope wound around the exposed flywheel and pulled just like the very first outboard motors
from pre-WWII.) So, there was Bubba relentlessly winding the start rope around the flywheel and pulling.
(From my personal experience I wouldn’t have given Bubba a one in a million chance of starting that engine without
first cleaning and drying and recalibrating the breaker points.)
Bubba’s relentless and exuberant persistence finally paid off after five minutes or so; that strange little Seagull
sputtered and sputtered and then burst back into life.
Bubba and Linda, Jane and I made many a jaunt around the Miami area in Bubba’s $100.00 dandy jalopy that
needed Linda to start it. On rainy afternoons, a favorite was Miami Beach where we would splurge for lunch at Wolfie’
s for their kosher cuisine and then for a buck we would take in the afternoon matinee. The matinee was a whole
afternoons worth of entertainment. The vaudeville show featuring the old timers of the industry with their corny one-
liners and their song and dance routines got our spirits up and made us laugh. The shows would wind up with some
3rd rate B-movie like “The Big Bus” that would have been better off soon forgotten but they were so distinctly dumb
that they left an everlasting remembrance.
‘The Grove” had a library with evening movies and an extensive collection of sailing books that we took full
advantage of.
The most impressive show of all was definitely at the Dade County run “Space Transit Planetarium”. It was built back
in 1966 and featured a wonderfully inspirational program by Isaac Asimov entitled “Child of The Universe”. Jane and
I paid several memorable visits there enjoying its rousing and moving message that lingers in our minds to this day.
That same Christmas Bubba told us that he wanted to take us to a party at his sister’s place so that we could meet
more of his family. We always had a good time with Bubba and Linda so it was natural to accept the invitation. The
time was set and Jane and I waited at the dinghy boat docks. No Bubba or Linda; an hour passed without them
showing up and we figured for whatever reason we had been stood up. It was Christmas Eve and we would make the
best of it and decided to go up to Lum’s Coconut Grove Restaurant next to the public library for dinner. Well, would
you believe that just about the time that we got ready to place our order, in came Bubba looking for us. Sincerely
sorry for the delay he insisted that we just had to do this Christmas party together. Away we all went in his $100.00
dandy to Bubba’s sister’s home.
It turned out that Bubba’s sister lived in the lap of luxury in a palatial palace with all the decadent frills. Bubba’s ratty
old jalopy was conspicuously out of place in the driveway but that didn’t bother Bubba or Linda who melded right into
the group who were all really well on their way to total inebriation when we arrived. The straightest looking person in
the entire group turned out to be Bubba’s gay brother who was a hairdresser.
As soon as Bubba got a few drinks into himself he got into a high-pitched verbal shouting match with the in-laws and
outlaws. His cousin was a hotheaded big-mouthed loud Italian Mafioso type who wound up telling Bubba that he
could have Bubba rubbed-out.
Bubba just wouldn’t shut up and finally left the party in a huff. That wasn’t the end of the Christmas Eve festivities
and we next went cruising off in Bubba’s $100.00 dandy to Linda’s sisters house. This place was even bigger and
fancier than Bubba’s sister’s place. By this time, Bubba had cooled down a little and we had a nice quiet visit with
Linda’s mother who we knew from St. Augustine.
Somehow, Bubba’s cousin’s husband was still on Bubba’s mind and he went into a tirade about Italians.
This is where we all ran out of steam and collapsed and then snoozed away the rest of the night. (Note; shortly after
our night at Linda’s sister’s place, it blew up…it was a meth lab.)
Coconut Grove on garbage pick up day was a bonanza for all the boaters from the Dinner Key anchorage because
of the tremendous extravagance of the neighborhood…the height of decadence. The residents threw out
everything. I can still remember a funny scene of our friend Warren Brown from the schooner Our Dream fighting
with a front end loader that was picking up trash and Warren was there tugging on a piece of chicken wire that he
wanted to fabricate fish traps with…Warren won.) That picture was worth a thousand words.
I have to mention here one of Bubba’s old friends from Jacksonville to lead you into chapter 9. He must have
indulged in the same mind altering substances as Bubba because his oil paintings contained similar depth and
scope.
Dave McDougal showed up at Coconut Grove in an old Ford van that he called home. Dave had wandered the state
in his old van and managed over time to get kicked out of everyplace that he had set up camp.
Dave liked Bubba’s boating life and that inspired him to get his own live-aboard boat and join the anchored out
crowd. Somehow as eccentric as Dave was he didn’t stand out at Dinner Key and Coconut Grove in the 1970s.
Dave moved aboard his 19-foot sailboat that he would now call home.
next chapter
Fowey Rocks Lighthouse had been constructed back in 1878 and
the 110 foot tall cast iron structure was put together to stand up to
the raging elements.
We have used that unique navigational marker to light our way many
times over the years and have always been inspired by the heroic
story of Jimmie Ponce’s father-in-law each time we saw that
distinctive aid to navigation.
An indication of the ferocity of that 1926 storm came from the
description of the outside of the structure after the storm when the
crew could finally venture out to survey the conditions. To their
amazement there was not a trace of paint to be found anywhere on
the outside of the cast iron structure that was then brilliantly shining
because of the violent sandblasting the lighthouse tower had
received.
the 110 foot tall cast iron structure was put together to stand up to
the raging elements.
We have used that unique navigational marker to light our way many
times over the years and have always been inspired by the heroic
story of Jimmie Ponce’s father-in-law each time we saw that
distinctive aid to navigation.
An indication of the ferocity of that 1926 storm came from the
description of the outside of the structure after the storm when the
crew could finally venture out to survey the conditions. To their
amazement there was not a trace of paint to be found anywhere on
the outside of the cast iron structure that was then brilliantly shining
because of the violent sandblasting the lighthouse tower had
received.
Bubba and Linda Schill aboard the 44-foot Nova Scotia sailing
schooner Jaeger at Dinner Key;
In the Travels of Dursmirg, Vol.1, I write about our encounters and
capers with this unusual, interesting and definitely eccentric couple
we first met in St. Augustine on our first night to anchor there. Now
we are together again our first night to anchor in Dinner Key for yet
another dimension in this strange realm of like-minded boaters
drawn together by this geographical magnet located at Coconut
Grove.
Later in this volume, there are more stories of Bubba and Linda at
Marathon and Key West down in the Florida Keys. In volume 4 “The
Rogues of St. Augustine and other Social Misfits”, we also encounter
Bubba and Linda plus more of Bubbas fascinating family who all
happen to march to a different drummer.
Therefore, here we are together again, in a place that has changed
its face dramatically a number of times over the years.
schooner Jaeger at Dinner Key;
In the Travels of Dursmirg, Vol.1, I write about our encounters and
capers with this unusual, interesting and definitely eccentric couple
we first met in St. Augustine on our first night to anchor there. Now
we are together again our first night to anchor in Dinner Key for yet
another dimension in this strange realm of like-minded boaters
drawn together by this geographical magnet located at Coconut
Grove.
Later in this volume, there are more stories of Bubba and Linda at
Marathon and Key West down in the Florida Keys. In volume 4 “The
Rogues of St. Augustine and other Social Misfits”, we also encounter
Bubba and Linda plus more of Bubbas fascinating family who all
happen to march to a different drummer.
Therefore, here we are together again, in a place that has changed
its face dramatically a number of times over the years.
One of many coconut shell bowls I
made by cutting the shell in half
and then cutting off one of the
ends so that the two halves would
then “nest” together when glued.
made by cutting the shell in half
and then cutting off one of the
ends so that the two halves would
then “nest” together when glued.
